Chapter One

Tomás

Three Months Ago.

The moments before my brother's murder played on repeat in my head. Daniel had never looked so scared as when I saw him scrambling in our old trailer home. We'd driven forty-five minutes from Chicago to the trailer park where we had lived before Daniel had taken his vows into gang life with La Sagrada Sangre and we moved closer to Dad.

I did not want to be there. "Bro, what are we doing here?"

Daniel's eyes were wide, unfocused as if he were stoned. He'd been quiet during the drive while I talked about T's eighteenth birthday party we had celebrated at Underground, La Sagrada Sangre's lair. I should've known something was up when he didn't tell me to shut up. I snapped my fingers in front of his face to try to break him out of whatever buzz he had going on. "Daniel, hey."

He jerked his head in my direction like one of them clickers in the video games Moochie liked to play. Made the hairs on my arm stand on end. He pointed his finger at me. The lines on his face drawn deep. "Don't go out tonight."

I'd meant to go meet up with Mooch. "It's Sunday. Why not?"

"Because I said so." He started to move around the small space. There wasn't much. The place had never been clean nor felt like home. I followed him into his old bedroom. We'd never shared the bedroom. Whenever he was home, I'd crash on the sofa. He pulled out an envelope from his back pocket and tossed it on the dusty bed. "T left this for you. Do what it says," he said, pointing at the envelope. "You hear me? Tomorrow, go to Tia's house. Forget mom. She's beyond help. You are not staying here without me, you listening?"

The mention of being without him made all the blood drain from my body. I didn't want to touch the envelope. I didn't want to know what he was blabbering about. He made no sense. I stood there, mouth open, like a loon. Daniel shook me, digging his fingers into my shoulders. "Be a fucking man." He shoved me hard and my back struck the window, dropping the broken blinds to the floor.

I blinked away the confusion, the haze. Be a man. Be a fucking man. I'd never seen him so worked up. Not even when Dolores and Manny died.

"Daniel, what's going on? What do you mean stay here? We don't live here anymore. Are you leaving me?" My chest clenched. He couldn't leave me here with Moms. He couldn't.

"I … shit's going down." He shook his head. "You can't go back to the city. Not tonight."

"Why?"

"Because shit's going down! Don't you listen? Just stay here."

"Are you coming back?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Just go to Tia's place. Take the money T gave you and leave the city."

The mention of T made me think of Nick.

My brother Nick had been MIA since I saw him last at Underground. Rumor had it that T had kidnapped him or some shit. I didn't believe that. T and Nick had a thing. I didn't know what type of thing, but they had something nobody but me knew about. And that was only because I knew Nick and he couldn't hide things for shit. The only reason Dad hadn't caught on was because Dad's love for Nick blinded the shit out of him. "Is it Nick?"

Daniel shook his head. We were all real brothers. Dolores and Manny died when I was little. Daniel was my blood brother from Moms and Dad, and Nick was our half-brother from another mother. Miguel and Cruz were our half-brothers too, from other mothers. And we had three sisters on top of that. My dad didn't believe in condoms.

"What is it then?"

Daniel stopped in the living room, swept his eyes over the dark stained sofa Mom used to crash in when she was too drugged out to make it to her room, now empty as if seeing it for the first time and wondering how he got there. With Daniel gone and Dad in Chicago, she'd start her shit again and despite what Daniel was blabbering about, I wasn't staying for that.

He fisted his hair, turning to me. Daniel looked so much like Dad while I had Mom's features. The only thing we shared were our dark eyes, even the shape of them was different. His were deep-set, mine were wide. His hair was black, mine was soft brown and curly. He had strong rigid features, a square jaw, and my face was rounder. Mom often called me pretty and I hated it.

Daniel's eyes shimmered for a second as he lowered his hands. His eyes held mine with such desperate fear. I wanted to erase that look from memory. Then he did something he hadn't done since we were kids and I'd wake up with nightmares.

He hugged me.

He smelled of Cheetos and stale booze. That's what I remember of my brother. Cheetos and stale booze. "I love you, bro," he whispered into my ear before shoving me away so hard I almost fell on my ass. Then he pointed a finger at me. "Don't go out tonight. Stay here."

With that warning, he walked out. I heard his car peel away from the curb. And then nothing. That was the last time I saw him. We couldn't even have an open casket funeral because his body had burned along with my dad's, Cruz, and Miguel.

I held the Glock 19 in my grip. The handle rough on my palm, my fingers fit perfectly into the grooves. The surface ridges felt like the skin of a basketball.

Daniel had given me my first basketball lesson when I was ten, he'd been fifteen at the time. "Oma," he said. For some awful reason he preferred that nickname rather than calling me Tommy or just Tomás, my birth name. He said it was because how I pronounced my name when I was still in diapers. I hadn't earned a tougher name yet, not at ten, so he kept using Oma. "Oma," he said. "You dribble until your fingers hurt. You dribble until you get that shit right. You don't stop dribbling."

Then he slammed into my ass and sent me skidding onto the concrete. Concrete burns were a bitch. I had remembered that too. But I had built a tolerance to pain. I pushed it away. I let my determined anger drive me.

"Again," I said.

He smirked, proud of me. I saw it in his eyes. I eventually earned my name.

But he was dead now.

All because of this piece of shit I had to kill.

"It should've been you!" Moms had cried in her usual drug induced state. Only this time she had tears and snot. Her eyes bloodshot not only because of the shit she injected into her veins but because of Daniel dying.

I didn't know the specifics of what happened, but the hit had to have been sanctioned by the Brennan family. And Maddox had been rumored to have visited with T at the club before the shit went down. I had been excited to meet the fucker at Underground. A don. I'd never met one before. Once we were inducted into the gang life, we'd give over our world for them. La Sagrada Sangre's loyalty to them wasn't about money, but about honor and family. But that shit meant nothing to the dons at the top. I didn't get to meet Maddox at the club, but I sure as hell was going to come face to face with him now.

It was only a matter of time before Moms hooked up with another pimp. Daniel and Dad wouldn't be there to protect me anymore. I knew in my bones things would end up worse for me. Although I towered over her, she always found a way to make me feel so damn small.

Tears burned my eyes. I knocked my head with a closed fist trying to get the hurtful memories out. I couldn't … I couldn't live like that no more. I couldn't. I needed not to remember. To go to a dark sleep and never wake up. My hand twitched. I'd taken something to take the edge off and it was already wearing off. I had to do this now or put the bullet into my own damn head.

Maddox Brennan had taken everything from me, and I was going to make him pay. He was predictable. Three days it took me to learn his routine. He'd been all smiles at a youth sports club as if helping sports enthused shits would absolve him of his sins. And the fucker had a lot to be absolved for.

No one noticed a gangly teen smoking pot on the street corner of this neighborhood, tapping a gun on his hip in a nervous twitch. And Maddox kept a piece at his back. I saw the way he moved. He was a bear. Tall, thick, and nicely fed. Rich assholes who used the poor to do their shit work and then killed them off when they didn't need them anymore.

I wiped my nose. My lips were tingling. My whole body started to sweat although the mid-February temperatures left the city in an icy haze with snow on the ground. And I had a ragged hoodie that smelled of Doogie's rottweiler and hot chips. Doogie had given me the gun for three bills. The contents of the envelope T had left me telling me to leave Mom, to go to Tia's house, but I was no coward. I had to avenge my family. Dad had left my moms enough money to have her dead in a week. I wondered if he did that on purpose. Maybe even after death he was protecting me.

Maddox walked out of the youth club toward his car. He climbed into his black sleek Beamer. I waited across the street under shadow with clear line of sight. He turned the key and the car exploded. The heat of it busted all the windows in the block and sent me on my ass.

Nah, shit like that happened only in the movies. It would've been nice to live in one of those movies where people never really died and I was the hero.

No, Maddox's car didn't explode. It clicked. Dead. My dad had taught me a few things too. Like about his contact at the rental place who held the keys to the world. Or at least access to the keys of certain cars. Because the Brennans were a New York family spreading into Chicago, the rental would be his undoing. I watched Maddox as he climbed out of the car with his phone to his ear, probably calling for a tow.

Game time.

I broke cover. My grip on the gun tightened.

Twenty paces away.

The air cold as shit. The empty street a perfect backdrop.

Ten paces.

I lifted the gun. My breath hung in the air. Not long now. The barrel aimed at his head.

It'd be over soon.

My dark shadow rippled across the gleaming blue paintjob of the Beamer in front of Maddox. Our eyes met in the shiny gloss. His body stiffened. He could've been me if I ever grew that old. Our features almost exact in the blur of the car's paintjob. Then he slowly turned to me.

"I'll call you later. Bring the tow," he said into the phone, his dark green eyes on mine.

My trigger finger twitched. I wanted to see blood on the white snow. I wanted him to know that for a heartbeat, I had power over him. Me. A kid. A Moya. I didn't realize I was crying until a sob tore out of my throat. "Ask me," I ordered. "Ask me why!"

"Joaquín." My father's name coming from his mouth felt wrong. I hated that his voice didn't waver, that he didn't look afraid. I hated seeing compassion in his eyes, maybe pity. I hated him. With every fiber of my being, I hated Maddox Brennan.

"Try again."

His shoulders drooped just a fraction. "Daniel."

"Yes!" Spittle fell from my lips. The tears. I hated them. "Do you have any idea what she's going to do to me now! What she's going to let them do to me!" WTF, Tomás? Shut the fuck up. I didn't have to tell him how Daniel protected me from my mother and her pimp. How Daniel taught me how to ride a bike, to read, to take my meds. I didn't have to tell him shit to end this. I took a step closer. "No! You don't know. Because all you do is break people. Kill everything good!"

"Tomás," he said. His voice took a soft tone as if he could be sorry, as if he could care for me. "Don't do this. It won't bring him back."

"I know. But I want to go with him."

Understanding flashed in Maddox's eyes. And I pulled the trigger.

Click.

Times up. I shut my eyes and waited.

I knew Maddox hadn't been alone. Tristan Brennan, the oldest, always had a protection detail on his brothers. The idiots had stopped by the coffee shop to get a cup thinking Maddox wouldn't need protection right now. It would've taken them twelve seconds to park, get out of the car, and identify the threat. Me. And a second after that my head would explode. I only prayed that it would go quick.

And it did.

I felt a battering ram slam against my body. I heard the snip, felt the pain, saw the blood, and then nothing.