## Chapter 2
Two days later, the Boston night was so cold that breath turned to white mist the instant it left the lips. Ezra stepped out of the Anchor, the waterfront restaurant that, on the surface, served expensive meals, but inside was where the most important decisions of the Cross Syndicate were made.
Tonight’s meeting had run longer than expected — numbers, agreements, the probing looks of senior members. Ezra had handled it all with his usual coldness. Yet in the quiet center of himself, he was still thinking about Rosie. She had probably been asleep for hours by now.
He would go home and kiss Rosie’s forehead, even if she wouldn’t know it.
The parking garage beneath the building was silent as a graveyard. The fluorescent lights flickered, casting alternating patches of brightness and shadow. Two bodyguards followed behind him, keeping just enough distance. The black car was parked in the far corner where the darkness was thick as ink.
Ezra walked toward it, then suddenly stopped. Instinct — sharpened through eight years at the top of the underworld — told him something was wrong. The air was too still, too perfect.
Then the blast tore through the night. Ezra turned in a split second, a reflex beyond thought. The bullet grazed his temple, leaving a streak of heat that burned like fire.
Blood ran down his face, dripping onto his white collar. Shouts. Return fire. Footsteps retreating into the dark.
Ezra went down, one knee hitting cold concrete. The world spun. But he was still alive.
Twenty minutes later, Ezra lay on a medical bed in a secret room known only to a few of his closest people. His private doctor stepped back, unable to hide his worry. “If you’d turned your head one second slower, the bullet would have gone through your skull.”
Ezra didn’t answer. He was thinking about Rosie. If he had died tonight, who would lift her into their arms when she ran to the door? Who would protect her from people like — people like who?
The door opened. Miles Donovan walked in, forty-five, a former FBI agent, Ezra’s right hand for six years — the only person besides Rosie he trusted completely.
“The shooter belongs to a small gang outside the city,” Miles said. “No name, no record. Hired hands.”
“Who hired them?”
“Whoever it was used an anonymous account, moved the money through three countries. We’re tracing it. But there’s one thing we know for certain — that person knew your schedule tonight in detail.”
Only someone inside the house would know those things.
“Find out who’s behind it,” Ezra whispered, colder than the winter night outside.
