Chapter 1

The spent casing from the shot that saved my husband's life hung from another woman's throat.

"Where did you get that?" I asked.

Camille Rusk touched the casing. Her smile barely moved.

"Nolan gave it to me."

Fourteen years ago, I had fired that shot into the wolf tearing at Nolan Bellandi's chest.

After our courthouse wedding, Nolan had drilled a hole through the casing and placed it in my palm.

You gave me the rest of my life, he had said.

But tonight, he had given it to her.

Camille sat at Nolan's right hand in the dining room at Black Pine Lodge. One hand rested over her stomach beneath her black dress.

Pregnant, she had announced before I arrived.

Nolan had not corrected her.

I looked at him.

Nolan sat beneath the low brass light, his dark shirt open at the throat. At thirty-eight, he had the calm face of a man who had spent years making other people nervous enough to speak first.

I had once mistaken that calm for strength.

"You opened my drawer," I said.

"Our drawer," he answered.

The correction landed harder than a shout.

Camille reached into the leather folder beside her plate and removed a folded sheet of paper.

I knew the paper before she opened it. I knew the hard downward stroke of my own handwriting.

Nolan slid it across the table.

It stopped against my fingertips.

"Read the third paragraph," he said.

I did not touch it.

I had written the letter nine months earlier after Nolan ordered two bleeding men removed from my clinic because they belonged to the wrong crew. I had treated them anyway. He had called that humiliation.

That night, alone at my desk, I had written everything I was too tired to say to his face.

Some nights I wish I had walked away that first winter.

When the last job you asked of me is finished, I am leaving.

I had folded the letter, locked it in my clinic desk, and gone home to him the next morning.

"Did you write it?" Nolan asked.

"Yes."

The room shifted. One of his men exhaled through his nose. Camille's thumb moved over the casing at her throat.

Nolan's eyes stayed on me.

"I was bleeding in a parking garage seven weeks ago," he said. "Camille came when I called. You didn't."

"I was at Harbor Street because you sent me there." My voice shook once. I hated that they heard it. "Three of your men had been shot. You told me not to leave until all three were stable."

"And when you heard I was down?"

"I handed them to another medic and came."

"Forty-three minutes later."

"They would have died if I walked out."

Camille leaned back in her chair. "He almost did."

I looked at her stomach, then at the casing Nolan had taken from my drawer and given to her.

I remembered reaching the private hospital and finding Camille's hands covered in Nolan's blood. I had caught her by both shoulders and thanked her for bringing my husband home.

Seven weeks ago, I had thanked her with both hands around hers. I had no idea what would happen after she came home with us.

My wedding band tightened around my finger, though my hands were cold.

Nolan pushed back his chair and stood.

"You were planning to leave me."

"I was trying to remember that I still could."

His jaw hardened.

Camille lowered her eyes, but satisfaction softened her mouth.

Nolan came around the table. He stopped close enough for me to smell the cedar soap he had used for fourteen years.

"Tell the room the letter was a mistake," he said. "Then kneel."

The capos went still.

"For what?"

"For making this family believe you were loyal while you planned your exit."

I finally picked up the letter.

"I came home the next morning," I said. "And the morning after that. I stayed fourteen years."

I tore the paper once and placed both halves on the table.

"You needed one bad night to erase all of them."

Across the table, Eamon looked at Nolan instead of me. Nolan saw it. The skin along his jaw tightened.

Nolan's face changed. Not much. I had been married to him long enough to see the instant his hurt became punishment.

He turned to Eamon Voss, the capo standing near the door.

"Take her phone."

Eamon did not move at first.

Then he crossed the room and held out his hand.

I placed my phone in it.

"Nolan," I said, "what did you promise her?"

Camille answered for him.

"A home where the woman in it wants to stay."

The fear came then. Hot, humiliating, and real.

Nolan had brought his men to watch me apologize. Now they were watching him decide what to do when I wouldn't.

He drew the revolver from beneath his jacket and opened the cylinder.

Five cartridges struck the table.

One remained.

He closed the cylinder and slid the gun toward me. It stopped beside the two halves of my letter.

“One round,” Nolan said. He pressed two fingers to his temple, his thumb raised. “Use it before they reach you.”

He smiled as if he’d offered me a kindness.

Nobody at the table moved.

I looked at the gun, then at the man I had once saved with a single bullet.

"Pick it up, Hollis."

My fingers closed around the grip.

"Take her to the wolves," Nolan said.