Bound And Marked Series: Book 3: No Mercy For The Wicked.

The industrial alleyway behind Velvet & Ash smelled of damp masonry, sour beer dregs from the kitchen bins, and the faint, cold metallic tang of a November river wind drifting up from the Delaware.

It was a dead-end corridor hemmed in by three stories of soot-stained brick on one side and the windowless cinder block flank of a commercial dry cleaner on the other, lit only by an old high-pressure sodium fixture bolted above the delivery dock.

The light hummed with a low, sixty-cycle drone, throwing down a pool of harsh, jaundiced amber that made the wet asphalt look like black ice.

Back in the recess beneath the iron fire escape, where the shadows pooled deep enough to swallow an engine block, Declan Hayes stood without moving.

The cold didn’t touch him.

When a man spends fifteen winters on concrete that leaches the heat directly out of his marrow, forty-two degrees in an open alley with three grand of bespoke charcoal wool over his frame feels like an idle summer draft.

The collar of his overcoat was turned up just enough to shield the nape of his neck, but the black silk-blend dress shirt beneath it was unbuttoned two deep at the throat, revealing the thick, dark hair curling across his collarbones and the corded spread of his upper chest.

His hands were out of his pockets.

Between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, a Dunhill burned slowly toward the gold leaf band, the smoke coiling upward through the iron slats of the landing above him.

He was thirty-six, broad as a bulkhead, six-foot-two of heavy, dense muscle that fifteen years of Department of Corrections iron piles had packed onto a naturally thick frame.

His dark hair was cut short and precise at the temples, threaded with clean silver at the sides, framing a square jaw covered in a dense, impeccably trimmed dark beard. He had the kind of olive-tinted, weathered skin that looked like it had been carved out of Mediterranean timber, but his eyes were what made men look at their boots in Tier 4: pale, clear green, heavily hooded, and entirely devoid of any mercy.

They were the eyes of a predator, one that always got its prey.

He took a slow, deliberate pull of the cigarette, the coal flaring orange against the dark timber of his fingers.

Declan exhaled through his nose, watching the twin jets of smoke dissolve into the freezing drizzle.

He had been out for four months now. Four months of walking city streets without an escort, four months of watching his accountants move eight-figure sums through front businesses between Wilmington and South Philly, four months of having every material comfort a man could buy laid out on silver platters in his penthouse suite.

And he had never been so profoundly, violently bored.

Inside the club, the heavy, subterranean thump of a synthesised bassline vibrated through the foundation, the thrumming beat almost invading through the soles of his hand-stitched leather boots.

He’d spent forty-five minutes on the mezzanine level with a glass of sixteen-year-old single malt, watching the floor turn. It was a circus of mirrors and thin skin. Disgusted and weary he had walked out through the VIP exit into this alley at the back of the club to smoke his cigarette in peace.

In 2011, when Declan had walked through the intake gate at Blackwood, men went to dark basement joints with sawdust on the planks; they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, they looked you dead in the jaw with hard, direct intent, and if two men stepped into a back room, it was a collision of muscle, blood, and teeth that left bruised knuckles and cracked floorboards.

There was dirt on it, real grit and passion.

There was a price to pay.

Out here, the modern scene was an insult to vice.

It was populated by twentysomethings with plucked brows and oiled skin who couldn’t look a man in the eye unless they were staring through the lens of a phone screen. They didn’t want blood and heat; they wanted a sanitized performance. They talked about boundaries and compatibility algorithms while trading filtered headshots over boutique drinks that tasted like fruit syrup.

He had taken three different men back to the hotel over the past six weeks—pretty, pliant things who gasped on cue and rolled over ass up hoping for an Instagram mention or an expensive breakfast—and each time, Declan had stood by the balcony window after ward, smoking in the dark, feeling completely empty.

The modern world was giving away sex like tap water, and it had drained every drop of adrenaline out of the trade.

Maybe he was getting too old and bitter for this, Declan wondered, staring into the dark lonely alley. Maybe it was all in his head. Prison had fucked him up real good, he thought with a wry grin.

Then, with a sudden, metallic crash of iron striking iron, the heavy steel exit door down the alley kicked wide open.

The pneumatic arm shrieked, spitting a wall of synthetic synth-pop and overheated club air into the alley before catching itself.

A young man came through the doorway fast, stepping off the wet concrete riser with long, agitated strides that carried him straight into the centre of the lane.

The door swung shut behind him with a dull, echoing clack, cutting off the club’s roar.

The silence that rushed back into the alley was absolute, broken only by the hum of the sodium lamp and the sound of the newcomer’s breathing.

Declan didn’t stir. He kept his back pressed against the brick beneath the iron staircase, his hand resting at chest height, the lit Dunhill motionless between his fingers.

His green eyes narrowed, locking onto the figure under the streetlight with the cold, automatic calculation of an apex predator watching an unmarked animal wander onto its ground.

The man in the spotlight had his back turned. He was tall—easily six feet, built with the clean, functional density of a distance runner who put in his miles before the sun came up.

Broad across the shoulders, tapering down to a narrow waist, long legs anchored in well-made, understated dark leather boots. He had dark brown hair, thick and damp from the heat inside, curling slightly where it hit the nape of his neck. He wore no overcoat, just a white, open-collared Oxford cloth dress shirt with the sleeves turned back to the elbows, exposing long, pale forearms corded with a sparse covering of short dark hair, wiry muscle and prominent veins.

He had both hands planted on his hips, his head dropped forward, dragging in deep, ragged lungfuls of the freezing Philadelphia air like a man who had just clawed his way up from the bottom of a locked pool.

“Unbelievable," the younger man muttered. The voice was a crisp, clear baritone—rich, educated, but rough around the edges with genuine, unfiltered fury. He dragged a hand through his brown hair, pushing the damp locks back from his forehead, and looked up at the drizzling black sky. “Absolute, utter waste of time. Why did I let him talk me into this?"

He turned in a slow circle, pacing three yards toward the brick wall and back again, muttering under his breath.

“’It’ll be good for you, Raff. You need to get out of the apartment, Raff. Rip the band-aid off, Raff.’”

His mockery of his friend’s voice was viciously sharp, delivered with the dry, biting cadence of someone who used words like scalpels.

“Right. Because what my soul was really crying out for was three straight hours of listening to a twenty-three-year-old barista explain his crypto portfolio while rubbing his bicep against my ribcage. Christ. What an absolute sewer."

Declan watched him pace.

Now that the man had turned toward the light, Declan could see his profile clearly. He was young—twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven at the absolute outside. But he didn’t look like the rest of the polished sheep inside. His face was entirely clean-shaven, the skin along his cheekbones and throat smooth, pale, and striking under the amber glare. His nose was straight, his chin cut with an arrogant, stubborn squareness, and his mouth was set in a tight, defensive line that suggested he had spent months biting his own tongue to keep from screaming.

There was no gloss on him.

He looked raw, overworked, and carrying an immense, silent weight behind his temples—the kind of quiet, solitary pressure Declan recognized from men who spent their nights staring at blank walls rather than admit they were drowning.

And yet, despite the tension, the sheer physical presence of the kid hit Declan’s chest like a closed fist. He was fucking stunning—not in the delicate, groomed way the city favoured, but with a natural, striking, masculine dignity that made the short hairs on Declan’s arms stand straight up.

Declan’s pulse, idle for four months, kicked hard against his ribs. The dull gray haze in his skull cleared in an instant, replaced by a spike of adrenaline so sharp it tasted like copper on the back of his tongue.

The kid had stopped pacing. He was leaning against the brickwork ten feet away, staring down at his own leather shoes, taking in another shuddering breath.

Declan stepped out of the shadow.

He didn’t make a sound.

Fifteen years on steel tiers teaches a man how to move his weight without telegraphing it, sliding through space like a sixty-ton locomotive coasting on greased rails.

But the air changed.

The ambient temperature in the alley seemed to tighten, the faint scent of sandalwood, expensive charcoal wool, and burning English tobacco drifting ahead of him into the pool of light.

Rafferty Shaw froze.

He didn’t jump, and he didn’t yelp. He simply went rigid, his chin coming up, his head turning with an instinctive, defensive caution. The movement was smooth, controlled—the reflex of an athlete who felt someone enter his perimeter before he ever heard a boot strike the pavement.

Rafferty’s eyes swept the shadows and locked onto Declan as the older man walked into the perimeter of the sodium lamp.

For a second, the alley seemed to lose its oxygen.

Declan was massive.

In the daylight, he’d look formidable; under the stark, unforgiving yellow glare of the back-alley fixture, he looked like something that had clawed its way out of an iron cage and bought an empire on the way out.

The wide shelf of his shoulders filled the corridor. The dark wool coat framed a chest that looked impervious to blunt force, and the open collar of his black shirt showed enough dark hair and heavy clavicle to make it clear that the muscle wasn’t cosmetic.

He had a deep, golden-brown tan that contrasted sharply with his neat, silver-flecked beard, and his mouth held the white cylinder of the Dunhill with an insolent, lazy familiarity.

Rafferty didn’t shrink back. Instead, his posture subtly shifted, his feet squaring beneath his hips, his chin lifting an inch higher. His eyes—a startling, piercing ice-blue that burned with sudden, defensive frost—swept over Declan’s frame, cataloguing the bulk, the expensive cut of the wool, the silver-capped temples, and the unmistakable, vibrating aura of violence wrapped in tailor-made luxury.

The alarm bells in Rafferty’s head weren’t just ringing; they were screaming. The man standing five feet away wasn’t a fellow patron taking a breather. He was a dangerous animal who had just walked off an unmarked territory line, and every single survival instinct Rafferty possessed told him that this stranger was far too dark, far too old, and infinitely too dangerous to engage with.

Rafferty’s jaw hardened, his ice-blue eyes turning flat and glacial. He looked at Declan with the cold, bored dismissiveness of a man brushing a fly off his lapel—a look he had perfected over five years of dodging aggressive advances on campus and in city bars without ever raising his voice.

“You’re standing in the draft," Rafferty said, his voice level, cool, and razor-sharp. “And the exit is behind you."

Declan didn’t move toward the door.

He didn’t even blink.

He took one last, long drag of the cigarette, the amber glow illuminating the deep lines around his hooded green eyes and the hard, mocking slant of his mouth. He held the smoke for two counts, then vented it toward the brick wall between them, letting the gray cloud hang in the freezing mist.

“You talk to yourself an awful lot when you think you’re alone, kid," Declan rumbled. The voice was low, heavy, and resonant, like stones grinding together in a deep well. It had an effortless, insolent weight that didn’t ask for permission to be heard. “Must get crowded in that head."

Rafferty’s eyebrows twitched—just a fraction—at the word kid. A cold, thin smile touched his lips, entirely devoid of warmth.

“It gets crowded when people with poor boundary awareness linger in blind alleyways," Rafferty replied smoothly, not giving up an inch of his ground. “If you’re looking for the smoking lounge, it’s on the roof. If you’re looking for someone to stroke your ego, the line inside starts at the coat check. Good night."

Rafferty turned his back deliberately, reaching into his pocket for his phone, intending to freeze the man out entirely.

It was a move that worked on ninety-nine percent of the men in Philadelphia; a single look from those ice-blue eyes, paired with that high-handed, educated disdain, was usually enough to make anyone with a shred of pride pack their bags and retreat.

He heard the heavy, measured crunch of Declan’s boots on the wet grit.

Rafferty didn’t even have time to slide his thumb across the screen.

The heat hit him first—a sudden, suffocating wave of body heat and the heavy, intoxicating scent of tobacco, dark amber, and clean rain. Before Rafferty could spin around, Declan’s bulk moved into his personal space with terrifying, fluid speed.

Crack.

Declan’s left hand struck the brick wall three inches to the right of Rafferty’s ear, the heavy palm flattening against the masonry with a force that rattled the mortar. A fraction of a second later, his right arm came up, his forearm planting hard against the brick on Rafferty’s left, effectively boxing the younger man into a three-foot pocket of stone and living muscle.

Rafferty’s back hit the brickwork with a dull thud.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?" Rafferty hissed. The ice-blue in his eyes flashed, the calm facade cracking instantly under the sheer indignity of being cornered.

He brought his hands up, flat against Declan’s chest to shove him back, but when his palms connected with the heavy wool overcoat, it was like pushing against an oak tree. Declan didn’t budge a millimeter. The wall of muscle beneath the cashmere was rock-solid, radiating an immovable, heavy density that made Rafferty’s athletic strength feel entirely useless.

“Back the fuck up. Now."

Declan didn’t back up.

If anything, he leaned an inch further into the frame, his chest hovering a mere whisper from Rafferty’s hands.

His six-foot-two frame easily crowded Rafferty against the mortar, using his broader shoulders and greater mass to eliminate every angle of escape.

Up close, Declan was overwhelming.

His hooded eyes were a vivid, burning green under the yellow sodium light, bright as cut jade, and they weren’t looking at Rafferty’s clothes or his posture.

They were fixed on Rafferty’s face.

Declan’s gaze dragged down slowly, deliberately—taking in the high, clean cheekbones, the smooth, pale line of his throat, the faint flush of furious blood rising beneath the skin, before latching onto Rafferty’s parted lips with a heavy, unblinking intensity that made the younger man’s breath hitch in his chest.

“You’ve got a lot of bark on you, schoolboy," Declan murmured, his voice dropping into a dark, gravelly register that seemed to vibrate directly through the space between their ribs.

He smelled of dark whiskey, high-end tobacco, and something intensely, brutally masculine that made the alley feel suddenly ten degrees hotter than it had any right to be.

“The question is if there’s any real bite to match it."

Rafferty felt his pulse hammer a frantic rhythm against the hollow of his throat.

The anger was immediate, hot, and righteous—he was an adult, a professional, a grown man who had spent his entire life keeping himself composed and in control, and this arrogant, overbearing bastard was treating him like an item on a menu. Time to put the man in his place, who the hell did he think he was? Rafferty felt cornered, angry and annoyed but tangled underneath that fury, coiled tight in his gut, was a sudden, sickening jolt of raw awareness that terrified him even more than the man’s size.

The sheer magnetism radiating off Declan was suffocating; it was like standing too close to an industrial furnace, the heat scorching the fine hair on Rafferty’s arms.

Rafferty hated it. He hated the heat, he hated the way his own body was reacting against his will, and he hated the smug, predatory certainty etched into every line of Declan’s masculine, bearded face.

“I am not your schoolboy," Rafferty ground out, his fingers curling into fists against Declan’s lapels, gripping the expensive wool not to pull him closer, but to brace himself. He forced his chin up, staring directly into those burning green eyes with all the frost he could summon. “And if you don’t take your arms off this wall in three seconds, I’m going to put a knee directly between your legs and see how much bark you have left."

Declan’s mouth twitched beneath his dark beard. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face, revealing straight, white teeth.

He didn’t look threatened; he looked completely, shamelessly enraptured.

“Fierce," Declan chuckled, the sound deep and appreciative, rumbling like thunder in an iron pipe. “God Almighty, you’re a fucking sexy when you’re angry. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?"

“You are completely out of your mind," Rafferty spat, his voice trembling slightly despite his best efforts to keep it steady. The proximity was driving him insane; Declan’s breath was brushing across his temple, hot and steady, and those green eyes were still locked onto his mouth with an insolent, proprietary hunger that made Rafferty feel completely naked under his cotton shirt.

“Move. I am not asking you again."

“I told you," Declan said, his voice dropping another octave, becoming smooth as black ice, heavy with an authority that wasn’t used to hearing the word no. “I don’t move until I get what I came out here for."

“I don’t care what you came out here for!"

“I came out here for some air," Declan said, his left arm shifting, the heavy, vascular forearm pressing slightly closer to Rafferty’s shoulder, penning him in until Rafferty could feel the wool of Declan’s coat brushing against his own arms. “And then a tall, bad-tempered thoroughbred with a mouth like a razor came through that door and started cursing at the clouds." Declan tilted his head, his gaze flicking up to Rafferty’s ice-blue eyes, pinning him in place. “Now let’s start this again. I told you my name. It’s Declan Hayes. What’s yours?"

“Go to hell, Declan Hayes."

“Tsk. Tsk" Declan shook his head slowly, his eyes narrowing with a dangerous, teasing glint that promised absolute ruin. “Rude. We’re going to have to work on that tone. Name, sweetheart. Give it to me before I lose what little patience I have left and decide to take your phone out of your pocket myself."

“Try reaching into my pocket and see what happens to your fingers," Rafferty fired back, his hazel-flecked blue eyes blazing. He was breathing hard now, the crisp November air doing nothing to cool the flush creeping up his neck. “You think because you threw on a three-thousand-dollar coat and didn’t shave your neck that you can just crowd people against a dumpster and demand their pedigree? I don’t give a damn who you are. You’re just another self-absorbed, predatory creep who thinks the entire world is an open bar."

The insult hung in the freezing air, sharp, vicious, and delivered with absolute precision.

Declan didn’t flinch. Instead, his green eyes flared with a savage, dark light that made Rafferty’s stomach drop. The amusement didn’t vanish, but it hardened into something far more dangerous—the look of a man who had just been handed a challenge he had zero intention of losing.

“Self-absorbed?" Declan repeated, the words rolling over his tongue like silk over iron. He brought his right hand off the brick, his heavy, thick fingers reaching out before Rafferty could swat them away.

With slow, deliberate insolence, Declan caught the placket of Rafferty’s open white collar between his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t choke him; he just anchored his grip right where the fabric met the hollow of Rafferty’s throat, his knuckles brushing against the hot, smooth skin of the younger man’s collarbone.

Rafferty gasped, a sharp, involuntary sound that betrayed him completely. His hands clamped instantly over Declan’s wrist, his fingers digging into the hard tendons, but Declan’s arm was an iron bar.

“You’ve got a lot of opinions about men, kid," Declan said, his voice dropping into a rasp that was entirely too intimate, entirely too heavy for an alley behind a nightclub. He tugged the collar forward just half an inch, forcing Rafferty to lean slightly off the brick, closing the last pocket of space between them until Rafferty’s chest was brushing the wool of Declan’s chest. “Most of them are probably right. But you’re wrong about one thing."

Rafferty’s throat worked as he swallowed, his ice-blue eyes wide, trapped in the green fire of Declan’s gaze. “What?" he managed to choke out, hating the way his own voice sounded breathless.

“I’m not like the ones inside," Declan said, his thumb smoothing once, slow and possessive, over the racing pulse point at the base of Rafferty’s neck. The contact was electric, searing through Rafferty’s veins with a heat that made his knees go weak. “They want to look at you. They want to show you off on a screen. I want to take you apart. I want to hear that sharp little tongue of yours begging for mercy before the sun comes up. I want to fuck you senseless till you cant walk straight for a week,"

The sheer, unapologetic filth of the words hit Rafferty like a physical blow.

His vision swam for half a second. The raw, unfiltered dominance in Declan’s voice was unlike anything Rafferty had ever encountered.

It wasn’t the clumsy, drunken groping of the men inside; it was the calculated, absolute possession of a man who had spent his life taking what he wanted and daring the world to stop him.

Every cell in Rafferty’s body was screaming at him that this was wrong, that this man was dangerous, that he was entirely out of his depth.

He was twenty-six years old.

He had spent the last five years in a quiet, safe relationship with a woman he loved but couldn’t desire, carrying the guilt of her broken heart across an ocean. He was drowning in his family’s pious, freezing silence. He was emotionally shattered, exhausted, and desperately trying to keep his footing in a life that felt like it was crumbling beneath him.

He couldn’t afford this. He couldn’t afford a fire this hot; it would burn him down to the studs.

“Don’t," Rafferty whispered.

The anger was still there, but the edge had softened into something raw, wounded, and terrified. His grip on Declan’s wrist tightened, not pulling, but holding on as if the older man were the only solid thing in the world. “Don’t do this. Just fucking leave me alone,"

Declan went still.

The predatory swagger in his eyes flickered, replaced for a single, fleeting heartbeat by something sharp and intensely focused. He felt the tremor running through the kid’s chest. He felt the sheer, genuine vulnerability beneath the sharp tongue, the profound loneliness radiating off this young, beautiful guy who looked like he hadn’t slept a full night in months.

Declan’s thumb paused against Rafferty’s pulse point. The possessiveness in his gut didn’t lessen; it mutated, growing heavier, darker, and infinitely more dangerous. He didn’t just want the kid’s body anymore. He wanted the grief. He wanted the fight. He wanted to lock this kid in a room away from the entire miserable world and keep him until the frost melted out of those blue eyes.

“Name," Declan repeated, his voice quiet now, stripped of the mockery, carrying an absolute, steady gravity that demanded an answer. “Give me your name, baby."

Rafferty stared into those green eyes, his chest rising and falling in shallow, frantic beats against Declan’s. The fight was draining out of his limbs, replaced by an intoxicating, terrifying surrender that made his head spin.

“Rafferty," he breathed, the word slipping past his lips before he could stop it. “Rafferty Shaw."

“Rafferty," Declan murmured, tasting the name, a slow, dark satisfaction curling around his mouth. “Good. That’s a start."

Declan’s grip on the collar tightened slightly, intending to pull Rafferty fully against his chest, intending to drop his mouth down onto those parted lips and take the kiss from those full slightly damp lips he’d been staring at for ten minutes.

Before his lips could touch Rafferty’s skin, the steel service door banged open with a deafening rattle of sheet metal.

“Raff! Oh, thank God, did you fall down the grease trap?"

Liam Ortiz’s loud, theatrical voice cut through the damp air like a siren. He stepped out onto the concrete landing, clutching a bright pink plastic cup, his oversized velvet blazer flapping in the wind. Behind him, the synthetic pop beat spilled into the alley once more, flat and obnoxious.

“Maya’s ready to kill someone because they charged her eighteen dollars for a tonic water, and—” Liam stopped dead on the top step, his eyes going round as saucers as he took in the tableau beneath the sodium lamp.

Declan didn’t let go immediately. He slowly turned his head, his green eyes fixing on Liam with a look of such murderous, lethal contempt that Liam visibly took a step backward onto the sill.

Rafferty seized on the distraction.

With a sharp, violent wrench of his shoulders, Rafferty tore his collar out of Declan’s fingers. The fabric gave way with a sharp rip, two small white plastic buttons popping off the placket and bouncing onto the wet asphalt between their boots.

Rafferty spun on his heel, stumbling two paces toward the door, his chest heaving, his face burning with a mixture of humiliated fury and sheer adrenaline.

“Raff?" Liam squeaked, looking between the massive, dark-bearded man in the tailored coat and his friend’s torn shirt. “Who... who is that?"

“Nobody," Rafferty choked out, grabbing Liam’s velvet sleeve with trembling fingers and hauling him backward into the doorway. “We’re leaving. Right now. Get Maya."

“Wait, but your shirt—”

“I said now, Liam!"

Rafferty shoved Liam through the threshold, his boots hitting the linoleum inside. For one split second, before the heavy steel door swung shut, Rafferty looked back over his shoulder.

His ice-blue eyes met Declan’s across the damp, yellow-lit alley.

There was no victory in Rafferty’s expression. He looked haunted, flushed, his collar hanging open to expose the pale hollow of his throat, his chest heaving as if he had just barely outrun an avalanche.

The steel door slammed shut on its pneumatic hinge. Clang.

The latch engaged. The alley fell silent again, save for the hum of the transformer and the steady hiss of the freezing drizzle.

Declan Hayes stood in the centre of the asphalt, his hands empty at his sides.

The cold mist settled into his dark hair, beading on the shoulders of his cashmere coat, but inside his chest, his blood was a roaring inferno. His fingers still tingled with the phantom warmth of Rafferty’s skin, the smell of citrus soap and raw adrenaline still clinging to his wool lapels.

He looked down at his boots.

Lying in the oily sheen of water on the blacktop was a small, four-holed white button, torn clean from the placket of the kid’s Oxford shirt.

Declan stared at it for a long, quiet moment.

Slowly, the tension in his jaw released. A low, dark laugh rumbled in his chest, rising up into the rainy night—a sound full of savage, unrestrained amusement and absolute certainty.

Fifteen years of concrete and steel. Four months of walking through a hollow, synthetic city that had forgotten how to bleed. And now, some twenty-six-year-old kid with ice in his eyes and fire in his blood had just called him an arrogant bastard and torn his own clothes to get away from him.

Declan bent down, his heavy fingers picking up the small white button from the wet asphalt. He rolled it between his calloused thumb and forefinger, feeling the sharp, broken thread, before slipping it carefully into the breast pocket of his coat, right over his heart.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and tapped a number into the screen without taking his eyes off the steel exit door.

The line rang twice before a gravelly voice answered. “Yeah, Hayes?"

“Mickey," Declan said, his voice dropping into that smooth, terrifying calm that Tier 4 knew better than a riot whistle. “I have a project for you."

“I’m in the middle of a drop, Declan. What is it?"

“Rafferty Shaw,” Declan said, savouring every syllable of the name against his teeth. “Mid-twenties, dark hair, blue eyes, talks like a judge, and dresses like an academic. Educated, carries himself stiff, real uptight, works in the city I bet.”

A short pause on the other end. “Rafferty Shaw? What the hell did he do?”

Declan looked at the empty space against the brick wall where Rafferty had stood, the ghost of those parted, breathless lips still seared into his memory.

“He didn’t give me his number,” Declan said softly. “I want his home address, his employer, his daily routine, and every scrap of paper on him on my desk before the market opens tomorrow morning.”

“Declan, you’re on parole, man. Don’t go pulling some crazy—”

“By breakfast, Mickey,” Declan cut him off, his voice flat, final, and lethal. “Or I start looking for a new broker.”

Declan ended the call, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and turned toward the mouth of the alley. He stepped out onto the wet sidewalk of Broad Street, the city lights reflecting off the hood of a sleek, blacked-out performance coupe idling at the curb, waiting for him.

He wasn’t bored anymore. Not even a little bit. He was buzzing with anticipation.