Prologue

Balto

Two Years Ago

The Mediterranean style mansion was several miles outside of Florence. Tucked away behind lush landscaping and a limestone wall, it was carefully hidden in plain sight. The iron gates with his family seal integrated into the metal were left wide open.

Tensions ran high.

This was the deal of the century.

Lucian was getting what he wanted.

As was I.

But we were exchanging two extremely valuable things, commodities men would sacrifice anything to get their hands on. Neither one of us wanted to give up what we had, but we also needed what the other offered.

Instead of meeting in a neutral, third-party location, I agreed to meet him at his estate. He might assume he had the upper hand, but I never went into a meeting without being prepared for battle.

Lucian sat across from me, a man nearly ten years older than me, with greasy black hair, sparse eyebrows of the same color, and lips so thin they looked like pencil marks. It made him appear constantly displeased. A gold cross hung around his neck, visible in the V neck of the shirt he wore. It was a hot summer day, humid as fuck, and it was no time to wear a suit.

I didn’t even own a suit.

Fuck that shit. I didn’t need a designer suit worth thousands to prove my worth. I could be buck naked, and people would know exactly who I was. They would know exactly what I was capable of.

He took one more drag of his cigar then put it out in the ashtray. “You first.”

I’d already agreed to have the meeting on his property, but that was because I was fearless, not cooperative. His limestone wall and armed men would be helpless if I decided to turn on him. I had every single man on this property targeted by a sniper, not to mention the man I’d brought with me to this rendezvous. I always came prepared—and I outsmarted my opponent before he even realized his lack of cleverness.

I pulled the box from my pocket and set it on the table in between us. We sat on the back patio of his home, a large area hidden from the sun by a thick overhang. There was a hammock to our left, a large patio seating arrangement to our right, and a huge pool with several naked girls splashing around.

I saw tits all the time, so I didn’t look.

The second Lucian spotted the box, his eyes widened with greed. His eyes needed several seconds just to acknowledge the ordinary box before he even reached for it. Like it was a bomb that could go off any second, he handled it with the utmost care.

“It’s just a diamond, Lucian. It’s not gonna break.”

His gaze flicked up, and that oily look in his eyes deepened into a callous expression. As an Italian, he had thick hair on his chest that contrasted against the gold jewelry he wore. He was a slimy man, a man who couldn’t get those women into his pool unless he paid them. “Sir Francis Drake took these from the Sentinelese off the coast of India hundreds of years ago. Only three in existence, these are no ordinary diamonds—but skull diamonds. So I will take my fucking time.” He lifted the box and popped the lid.

Inside the velvet lining sat the large diamond, carved perfectly in the likeness of a skull. Lucian wasn’t the kind of man that needed money, but he liked to collect expensive things nonetheless.

He stared at it for minutes, not to determine if it was genuine, but to appreciate its allure. “Beautiful.” He shut the lid then slipped the box into his pants pocket.

“Your turn.” I had all three diamonds, and the only reason I was giving up one was because Lucian had something I wanted. While he was a greasy man without a spine, he was brilliant. He knew how to construct special kinds of bombs, from small ones that were completely undetected, to large bombs that could destroy an entire city. They weren’t ordinary, instead specially designed so they couldn’t be defused once activated. They could be remotely detonated. And most interestingly, he created bombs that could be ingested. They could survive the lining of the stomach for twelve hours before the acid disintegrated them. But even those could be remotely detonated, exploding a man from the inside. The Skull Kings were a ruthless band of thieves and tyrants, but even we didn’t have access to that kind of fun. It would be an excellent torture technique, and it would also make it easier to conquer those who hadn’t been conquered before. Lucian was the only one with those explosives—and he was very selective about who he shared them with. It would give me an advantage my enemies would never have.

Lucian rose to his feet, not to retrieve his end of the bargain, but to dismiss the conversation.

My heart rate didn’t change. My adrenaline didn’t kick in. The move was anticlimactic because I expected this. Little was known about Lucian, including the validity of his word, so I didn’t arrive with high expectations. A man’s reputation always preceded him, and if he didn’t have a reputation, good or bad, that was never a good sign.

“We’re finished here, Balto. I got what I want—but you won’t get what you want.” A man of short stature, Lucian was only intimidating because of his obsession with explosives. There was no way to know where he kept them—or if there was a detonator in his pocket.

I didn’t rise from my seat, not finished with the meeting. “I don’t care how a man earns his living. I don’t care if he kills for a paycheck or he sells bread at a bakery. A man’s worth is dependent on his word. When the money, guns, and women are gone, that’s all we have left. Lucian, think about what you’re doing. Think about what kind of man you want to be.” My black T-shirt was thin enough to allow the slight breeze to breathe across my skin. My jeans felt a little loose because I wasn’t packing a weapon. I’d agreed to leave my pistol off the premises.

Lucian cocked his head slightly as his oily eyebrows rose up his face. “I want to be the man who outsmarted the Skull King. Now leave my property—and have a good day.” He extended his hand to the edge of the patio where the front of the house was located. My men waited there for me, prepared for anything.

I still didn’t rise. “My reputation precedes me—and I earned it. I strongly suggest you sit back down and finish this deal as planned.”

“Are you threatening me? You’re surrounded and outnumbered.”

“Am I?” I asked, maintaining the same calmness because that would only annoy him. The second a man got angry, he lost. And I was doing laps around this loser.

His eyes narrowed farther.

I waited for him to make the right decision and sit back down. He had no idea what was waiting for him at the front of the house if he didn’t uphold his end of the deal. Maybe he’d taken the most valuable diamond in the world, but he was about to lose something that couldn’t be replaced.

He chose wrong. “Leave. Now.”

I knew he wouldn’t shoot me because that would start a war he would spend the next decade fighting. But he’d crossed me because this exchange was personal rather than professional. I rose to my feet and left the table, walking beside him as we returned to the front of the house. My three cars were in the driveway, windows tinted and bulletproof.

We approached the gravel walkway as his armed men stood at attention, watching me closely in anticipation of a sudden movement.

“Leave,” Lucian said. “Before I tell my men to open fire.”

I walked to the middle car and opened the back door. Handcuffed and bound, a man sat in the back seat with the same oily black hair. His face didn’t have a single bruise because he’d been treated well while in my captivity. But all of that was about to change.

I yanked him out of the car.

He started to scream against the gag that swallowed his words.

Lucian stepped forward, visibly pained to see his brother be yanked out of the car and pushed to his knees on the gravel. “Let him go.”

I grabbed a pistol from one of my men and pointed it at the back of his brother’s head.

“Fire!” Lucian ordered.

Before his men could do anything, each one was hit by a sniper. They crumpled, dead around him.

His brother shook as he rested on his knees, his back rising and falling as he breathed through the tears that grew in his eyes.

Lucian held up his hand. “Alright. I’ll give you what you—”

I squeezed the trigger.

His body fell forward, and he was dead before his face smacked into the gravel. His body fell with an audible thud, and his blood soaked the rocks surrounding him.

Lucian’s previously cool persona was long gone. He stared in horror at his only brother’s body, so much pain written on the surface of his black eyes. Instead of retaliating, he just soaked up the despair, taking in every single drop like a dry sponge.

“You paid for that diamond with your brother’s life—hope it was worth it.”