Through the Fire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Links

  Also by Michelle St. James

  Through the Fire

  New York Syndicate Book Three

  Michelle St. James

  Blackthorn Press

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Links

  Also by Michelle St. James

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 by Michelle St. James aka Michelle Zink

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Isabel Robalo

  Prologue

  Farrell Black stared up at the screen at the front of the conference room, his eyes skimming the angry red dots scattered throughout the city. He’d been trying to find a pattern, his brain stubbornly searching for coherence, to no avail.

  He thought about Occam’s Razor, the idea that the most likely solution is usually the most obvious.

  “There is no strategy,” he finally said.

  “No sense makes the most sense,” Damian Cavallo agreed from his seat across the table.

  Nico kept his eyes on the screen. “I tend to think you’re right.”

  Farrell turned his eyes on Christophe Marchand and Luca Cassano, their faces shadowed in the room, most of the lights shut off to make seeing the screen easier.

  “Thoughts?”

  “I see no other explanation for the random nature of these hits,” Christophe said.

  Luca shrugged. “Makes as much sense as anything else.”

  “The question is, what do we do about it?” Nico murmured.

  Farrell hadn’t figured that out yet either. They’d thought eliminating Primo Fiore was the answer to reclaiming the New York territory for the Syndicate. Primo had, after all, been the leader of the Fiore organization, the only impediment to the Syndicate’s takeover once Damian Cavallo had pledged his organization to it.

  They’d been wrong.

  Farrell didn’t like being wrong.

  His gaze came again to Damian. He’d always been a man of few words — something Farrell understood well enough — but Damian had grown even more subdued in the wake of his extended bid to recapture the New York territory.

  It had begun with Aria, Primo’s sister.

  Didn’t it always begin with a woman?

  The question incited no bitterness. His own reckoning had happened at the hands of Jenna, the love of his life and mother of his daughter. It had been his life’s greatest upheaval — and its greatest happiness.

  But it had nearly cost him everything, including his freedom, his life.

  Still, it had been wishful thinking to believe their troubles in New York would end with the death of Primo. True, he had commanded the second biggest operation in the territory after Damian’s. In fact, a few short months ago, the Fiore organization had been the only thing standing between the Syndicate and its rule of New York under Damian’s leadership.

  They hadn’t expected Malcolm Gatti, the crazy bastard who’d been pulling Primo’s strings, to return after being run off during the shoot-out that had killed Primo. He’d been working with Stefano Anastos and the Greek Mob during the last conflict between Fiore and the Syndicate, and Farrell had agreed that the likelihood of Gatti launching another attack on New York was slim considering he’d barely escaped with his life the first time.

  Clearly, they’d been wrong about that, too.

  And Farrell really fucking hated being wrong.

  “What do they hope to gain with this strategy?” Christophe asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Chaos,” Damian said softly, his eyes on the screen. “It washes with what we’re picking up on their digital operations.”

  “Which is?” Luca asked.

  “Nothing,” Damian said. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Nico turned away from the screen, settled his unnervingly level gaze on Damian. “Nothing?”

  Damian nodded. “There is no digital footprint. Everything we were tracking before — bank routes, encrypted email, flight plans, shipping manifests — has all gone quiet.”

  “How can an organization — any organization — exist off-grid in this day and age?” Nico asked.

  It didn’t surprise Farrell that the question had come from Nico. It was Nico Vitale who had reimagined the old-world mob into a modern army of coordinated, intelligent men capable of violence, but also well-versed in using technology and modernity to their advantage.

  His belief in the new model had nearly gotten him — and Angel, his wife — killed, but it had proven to be visionary. Their first priority after taking down Raneiro Donati, the former leader of the Syndicate, had been to restructure the organization on a grand scale. The irony was not lost on Farrell that their current enemy was using the very tactics they were working to retire.

  “I have no idea,” Damian said. “I can only assume they’re reverting to the old-school model of security, communications, transportation. Whatever they’re using, we can’t see it. Christophe and I pooled the capabilities of our cyber labs and the most they could find through their combined efforts was one flight in to JFK by a former low-level associate of Anastos and a stray email on one of the old encrypted channels that asked for a new channel.”

  Farrell raised his eyebrow. “And?”

  “The inquiry went unanswered,” Christophe said.

  Nico sighed. “So we have an unseen enemy indiscriminately hitting targets to create chaos without any traceable presence.”

 
“Fuck,” Farrell muttered.

  “I’d say that accurately sums up our position,” Christophe said.

  “I’m not hearing any solutions,” Luca said. “Are we saving those for later?”

  “I can only think of one,” Nico said.

  Farrell looked at him. “Care to share?”

  “Locke Montgomery,” Nico said.

  “Fucking-A,” Farrell muttered. “He’s a mercenary.”

  Yes,” Nico agreed. “One with experience in off-the-grid operations.”

  He had a point. Locke was a strange mix of modern technology, altruism, and recklessness. His targets were self-selected and isolated, seemingly random people who had subverted law and order, committing crimes for which they never paid a price.

  Locke’s targets only had one thing in common — they were people who had hurt innocents in one way or another: corporate crooks who wrongly foreclosed on the homes of hardworking people, murderers and rapists who walked due to technicalities in spite of overwhelming evidence, financial advisers who invested their clients’ money in doomed funds that ultimately bankrupted retirement accounts and college funds.

  It wasn’t that Locke didn’t have cyber capabilities. On the contrary, his cyber team was at least as good as the ones run by Christophe and Damian.

  But Locke’s team was used to working unconventional targets who were more careful than most, targets who attended Harvard Business School and Yale Law, who knew enough about modern technology to subvert or avoid it — or pay someone to do it for them.

  Locke’s specialty was finding a way in when it looked like all the doors and windows had been sealed. He was as likely to parachute into a target’s domain as he was to hack into their financials, as likely to tail a target himself as he was to hire someone else to do it. He worked with a small band of mercenaries like himself, men who had turned their back on traditional law and order, including Braden Kane, the former FBI agent who had helped get Farrell and Jenna out of the mess in Europe that had almost killed them both.

  “It’s not the worst suggestion,” Farrell said.

  “Who the hell is Locke Montgomery?” Damian asked.

  Farrell listened as Nico explained, glossing over the more unpredictable elements of Locke’s operation. Damian wouldn’t want predictable, not after the shooting of Aria on the night Primo had been killed.

  “No offense,” Damian said, “but I don’t know this guy from Adam. No way am I letting him into our operation.”

  “I haven’t personally worked with Montgomery, but I do trust Nico,” Christophe said. “Given our limited options, perhaps you should do the same.”

  Damian stood, his gaze traveling to the men seated around the table. “Pull rank if you want — you’re the boss — but as long as the New York operation is mine, I’m opting out of bringing in Montgomery.” He headed for the door. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  The door shut heavily behind him.

  “That went well,” Farrell said.

  “We can always force his hand,” Luca said. “He’s right: we’re in charge.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Nico said. “We brought him in to lead the territory. Micromanaging his leadership will only undermine his trust in the organization. That damage will be worse than any that can be done if we wait him out.”

  “Waiting bores me,” Farrell said, “but I agree, it’s the wisest move at this point.”

  “He may come around,” Christophe said. “He can be reckless, but he’s one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever met.”

  Farrell didn’t know whether to be annoyed or proud that Christophe’s gaze flickered his way.

  “Then we’re agreed?” Nico asked.

  Christophe nodded.

  “I agree,” Luca said.

  “Me, too,” Farrell said. “But we can’t let it go on too long. Vegas is still a mess. We need to deal with it sooner rather than later.”

  One

  Aria ran a butter knife around the edge of the flower pot and tipped it on its side, gently maneuvering the tiny tomato plant out of it. She loosened the soil around the roots and set it into the slightly larger pot she’d prepared in advance. Then she sprinkled a little more soil on top and pressed it gently in around the stem, placing it next to the others she’d done that morning.

  She leaned her hands on the potting table and lifted her eyes to the field beyond the greenhouse. It was early March and spring seemed further away than ever, the ground white and hard in every direction, but she could already see the big gardens she’d plotted on paper as they would look once they’d been dug and planted beyond the glass.

  She loved the greenhouse. It had been a refuge during the weeks since Primo’s death, the warm soil a soothing counterpoint to the hours she spent in the basement firing range with cold steel between her hands. She’d planted dozens and dozens of seedlings: tomatoes and cucumbers, zucchini and lettuce, peppers and eggplant. There were strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, and an assortment of flowers she would plant in her cutting garden. She wanted to fill the old Westchester house with sun and fresh air for Damian, with flowers and love.

  After they kill Malcolm Gatti and Stefano Anastos, of course.

  But a much as she loved the greenhouse, it would never be a substitute for gardening outside, for sinking her hands into earth warmed by the sun. The gardens she planned — a large cutting garden and an even larger kitchen garden — were ambitious undertakings for a single year, but Damian had promised her all the help she would need to turn her dream into a reality.

  They would never be able to eat everything she’d planted, but she’d already spoken to Carol Lewis, the director at the domestic violence shelter that was Damian’s favorite philanthropic project, about setting up a program to ensure the delivery of fresh produce to the shelter’s new location in Greenwich. Anything extra would be given to the single mothers who had left the shelter and were struggling to rebuild their lives.

  Her hand went to her stomach. It was still flat, although there were other changes in her body she had been worried would alert Damian to her pregnancy. It had been a relief to hear him attribute her fuller breasts, her glowing skin and lustrous hair, to the weeks she’d spent recuperating since the shooting at Velvet, the nightclub that had been her brother’s headquarters.

  It still hurt to think of him. She’d gotten used to the fact of Primo’s death, the intellectual truth of it. But thinking of him made her feel like someone was excavating a fresh wound in her heart. She was tormented equally by the memories of him as a child — of them together as children — and the ones of him as a man.

  A man who had set fire to the Franklin Street Shelter, who had risked the lives of the women and children there to send a message to Damian.

  A man who had sanctioned her kidnapping at the hands of Malcolm and the Greeks.

  A man who been willing to trade her to soothe his wounded pride.

  He hadn’t been well. He’d never been well.

  The fact of it didn’t ease her pain — pain that was heightened by the fact that he’d died alone. That after all Primo had done for him, Malcolm had run when Primo really needed him.

  She knew it was more complicated than that. Knew that if Malcolm had stayed, more people may have died.

  Maybe even Damian.

  But she couldn’t forget the pain in Primo’s eyes as Malcolm left him behind.

  She missed Primo as he’d been before Malcolm, missed him as he was when he was kind and gentle, when he called her “bella” and stroked her hair, but she felt guilty for being relieved that he was gone when she thought about the other Primo, the one who would rage at the smallest perceived slight. Her child would never have been safe with him in the world.

  It was a complex mess of emotion she couldn’t begin to untangle.

  One thing she did know was that she wouldn’t be able to hide her pregnancy from Damian forever. She’d been lucky that her morning sickness had been mild, that she’d had t
he recovery of her gunshot wound to blame when she slept too much and wanted nothing more than to spend her days and night safely ensconced in the house with Damian.

  That excuse wouldn’t last much longer. Eventually her stomach would swell and her condition would be undeniable. She felt alternately giddy and determined by the revelation, the thought of being a mother filling her with the kind of hope for the future that she hadn’t felt since she was a child. The idea of telling Damian, of seeing the happiness in his eyes, feeling his big hand on her belly as he waited for their baby to move, made it difficult to keep her secret.

  Then she would remember Malcolm and Stefano.

  She knew Damian and the leaders of the Syndicate were working to finish off the pockets of rebellion that were preventing Damian’s takeover from being an unmitigated success. He’d been open with her about the obstacles in their way, about the beatings of their men and the thefts of their money, the explosion that had demolished one of the Syndicate’s book making operations in Brooklyn. To his credit, he’d been equally open about the strategies he was using to remove those obstacles, but taking out the low-level players wasn’t enough.

  She wanted Malcolm and Stefano dead and she wanted to see it — preferably do it — herself.

  It was easier said than done. She’d heard Damian talking to Cole and Farrell about the difficulty of formatting a strategy when their enemy’s movements didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason.

  And that was only one of the problems.