Have you ever made a mistake? A big one? I’m back in Chicago and back in business with my boss, Rinaldo Moretti. So much for my run at a normal life. There are some new faces in the organization, and someone’s been cooking the books. Personally? I think they’re after more than a just little cash. If I have any hopes of flushing out the traitor, I’m going to need to find a good hooker to help me sleep at night. As the bodies pile up, I find solace in Alina. There’s something about her, something different. She understands me without asking a lot of questions. It’s as if she’s known me for years, yet we’ve only just met. If I weren’t so distracted by business, I’d try to figure out her story. She’s the only one keeping me grounded as my world spins out of control. I’m going to lose the one man who has ever meant anything to me – the only man to ever call me son. I want to deny his request, but there is no avoiding what awaits me. I never wanted any of this, but I’m out of options, and time is running out. Some choices have unforeseen consequences, and some choices are simply irrevocable. **

After Evan Arden was imprisoned by the enemy for a year and a half, he returned from the desert as a military hero. He’d suffered some minor injuries during his captivity, was discharged from the Marines with a touch of shellshock, but was considered otherwise unharmed. Now he wonders how he ended up where he is—incarcerated in Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center for using his sharpshooting expertise to take out the neighborhood park with a high-powered sniper rifle and multiple rounds of ammunition. Lia Antonio, the woman he rescued from the desert heat the previous year, is the only person who can bring him out of his sleep-deprived psychosis and mounting PTSD. When she does, Evan knows he can’t just let her go again. He’s never considered leaving the business before—who retires from the mafia?—but he’s determined to get both Lia and himself out of harm’s way. Evan faces overwhelming forces from multiple directions as a deal to get him out of jail turns more dangerous than he imagined. With a mob war on the horizon and the feds holding evidence over his head, Evan has no choice but to throw himself into the middle of another warzone. In his efforts to make things right, Evan crosses the wrong man and finds himself on the business end of the crosshairs. With his acute perception and intelligence, he tries to stay a step ahead of his former co-workers, but this time, it isn’t just his own life on the line—he’s got to protect Lia from the man who once called him son.**