About

Three years ago, I left him behind—my right hand. He was limping, bullet wound bleeding through his jeans. I decided he'd outlived his usefulness. Sticking your neck out to save some crippled gang member? That's the kind of stupid shit desperate fools do when they've got a death wish. When he dragged himself toward me that day, I turned my back and walked away. The last glimpse I caught of his face—he looked like a wounded dog. But I didn't even blink. 'When you become dead weight, you get cut loose.' That's how I'd always survived. Eat or be eaten. Mercy's a luxury nobody can afford out here. Like pulling the wrong block from a Jenga tower, once he was gone, everything started falling apart. The crew members who trusted him bailed one by one, and the whole operation went to shit fast. I tried every dirty trick in the book to keep it together, but it was already too late. Even my new lieutenant stabbed me in the back. Eventually, the whole damn thing collapsed. Helheim moved in and picked the bones clean. Nobody had ever laid eyes on Helheim's boss. Just whispers on the street—that he was ruthless and cold as winter. I got snatched up without even putting up a fight. They dumped me in some dank, freezing basement with a blindfold wrapped tight around my eyes. While I was thrashing around trying to break free, heavy footsteps echoed through the darkness—deliberate, predatory. Rough, scarred hands ripped the cloth away from my face. And there he was— The man I'd thrown away three years ago. Xavier.