Chapter 1

The sun burned down on the dry earth, making the air flicker, distorting the shapes of almost two dozen race cars lined up at the abandoned road stop. It was only the end of April but not far from Death Valley, the temperatures already reached unbearable heights in the afternoon. I killed the engine of my yellow BMW M4 and got out. Sweat almost instantly broke out on my skin, making my white tee stick to my skin. I was familiar with heatwaves, having grown up in Las Vegas, but the unmoving air in this part of the country still often made me breathless. The heat wreaked havoc on the race cars and drivers all the same, which was why we chose the area for our qualifications.

Many familiar faces nodded at me through the windows of their cars, staying in the cool shelter the indoors provided. Some of them never got farther than the qualifications, but others displayed serious talent. My steps faltered briefly, my gaze magically drawn to a streak of flaming red. For a moment I was sure this was a fata morgana. Slowly, more and more of the red streak of color took shape. A long mane of red hair framing a pale face. Her red lips, the color of dried blood, curved into a smile around the cigarette dangling from her mouth. The smile wasn’t flirty or particularly friendly. Challenge lay in her eyes. It was too soon for pit girls and groupies—they mostly stuck to the final races or swarmed around the winners of the qualification races after the finish line—and even if it weren’t, I’d have known she wasn’t one of those girls. The way she perched on the hood of a neon-green Toyota Supra told me it was her car and she’d be racing today. Women rarely made the cut into the finals. My brother Remo thought they lacked ruthlessness and ambition, but they were probably only more sensible than us men. With this girl, I had a feeling she might surprise us.

I dragged my eyes away from the redhead and moved toward the gas station.

A generator spluttered beside the run-down shop, powering a small AC unit inside the decrepit building. I entered our makeshift headquarter, where Crank was already going over the registration sheets piling up on the desk. The heat was marginally more bearable inside but the small AC unit didn’t stand a chance against the almost hundred degrees blasting down on us. The broken gas station window certainly wasn’t helping either.

“Any new arrivals?” I asked, shaking Crank’s outstretched hand. I knew about at least one, and I was awfully curious about her.

“Three,” Crank said. “A girl and her brother. Plus another guy with a big ego.”

“He can’t be worse than our favorite egomaniac?” Racing was a magnet for a certain type of person, but some displayed an over-boarding amount of self-centeredness.

“Not sure yet, but he’s close.”

I held out my hand for the info sheets Crank had dug up about the newbies.

I narrowed my eyes as I read what Crank had found on the girl and the guy with her—her supposed brother. Nothing. No arrests. Squeaky clean with generic names. “This stinks,” I muttered. Mary, really? This girl wasn’t a Mary. The only way any Mary probably got close to her was in a glass as a Bloody Mary.

Crank nodded. “Fake names, definitely. That guy, he’s got the hint of an accent. Eastern European or something like that.”

Eastern European. The only time I ever dealt with Eastern Europeans, they were Bratva guys trying to mess with business or kill me. The races weren’t their main target though. Drugs and prostitution were their most successful business areas after all.

I went in search of “John” and “Mary”.

The qualification race would start in an hour. If this girl and her companion proved trouble, I wanted to know in advance and make sure they stayed the fuck away—unless it was the fun kind of trouble. The redhead still leaned against the hood of her car, smoking. By now her cigarette had burned down to a small stub. She flicked it away with her fingers. Given the red of her lips, I would have expected her nails to have the same color but hers were short and painted in a dark, almost black color.

The guy beside her with the buzz-cut stomped out her cigarette as it landed before his boot-clad feet. I had a feeling that was their usual dynamic. I strode toward them. “John” said something to “Mary” but she only smiled at me. Her eyes didn’t hold nervousness as I stopped in front of them. She lit up another cigarette. Maybe this was a small sign of unease, but it was difficult to say with this girl. Usually the Camorra tattoo on my forearm made most people shit their pants, even some of the people who knew me well, and they didn’t even register with false names in my races.

“Mary, John,” I said with a hard smile.

A bare nod from the guy.

The girl took another deep smoke before she squashed it under a heavy black leather boot.

“What lovely names…”

“Actually, it’s Dinara.”

Fake John threw her a warning look. “Mary, what—”

There was a certain edge to his words that belied English wasn’t his mother tongue. “Give us a moment, Dima.” She never took her eyes off me. Dima gave me a harsh look, promising me retribution, and something in his blue eyes made it clear that he wasn’t unfamiliar with the act of causing others pain, but neither was I. He shoved away from the hood and stalked toward his car, a blue Nissan Silvia.

“Dinara?”

She gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Mikhailov. Dinara Mikhailov.”

She said the name as if it meant something, or should mean something to me. I didn’t make a habit of getting too involved in all the business areas of the Camorra. Organizing and driving the races was a full-time job.

“Sounds Russian.” And not just that, it was the name of the fucking Pakhan in Chicago, Bratva royalty. Mikhailov was a common name in Russia though, so this didn’t mean anything.

“It is.”

“Why the fake names if you give them up at the first chance you got?”

She shrugged. “Dima insisted, and it got me your attention.”

As if she would have needed fake names for that. This girl was hard to ignore.

“A Russian name would have had the same effect.”

Her smile widened, white against the luscious red of her lips. “You don’t like Russians?”

I walked around her car, taking a closer look at the paint job. Viper was written across the passenger door and a snake curled along the side of the hood. “Just a certain kind of Russian.”

She never took her eyes off me. I couldn’t tell if it was due to worry that I’d do something to her car, or because she had trust issues in general. Probably both. “And what kind of Russian would that be?”

I stopped beside her and leaned against the hood of her car, an open provocation. You didn’t touch another’s car without permission and you definitely didn’t use it as a chair. “You want to race?”

She smirked. “Quick thinking.”

I stifled a smile. I liked her sass. “That takes courage. Few girls ever make the final cut. It’s a rough game. People get hurt. People die.”

She rose from the hood, making herself taller than me. A flicker of anger lay in her eyes. “I’m not like other girls.”

“I have no doubts.” I stood, towering over her again. This was my territory and everything followed my rules, even this girl would have to learn this. “Good luck with the qualification race. Don’t get yourself killed.”

“I’m hard to kill.”

I nodded then with a smirk toward Dima who hadn’t let us out of his sight for a second, I headed back to Crank in the gas station. He’d gotten rid of his T-shirt, revealing his scarred, naked back. Since a car accident last year, the burn wounds marred his back and left arm.

“And?” he asked, looking up from one of the laptops. Wi-Fi could be spotty but we tried to keep track of incoming bets. Nino and a couple of accountants handled most of the betting, but if things went too slow, it sometimes required us to make the races a bit more challenging to drive up the excitement.

“As we suspected. Not their real names.”

Crank grimaced and picked up their registrations. “So what do you want to do? Kick them out with a warning? Or…?”

“I’ll have to give Remo a call. Maybe he knows what’s going on.”

“Only forty-five minutes until the race.”

“It won’t take long. Remo hates chit-chats.”

I threw a glance out of the window. Dinara observed me too. If she was involved with the Bratva, she was playing a dangerous game. The days of our truce had elapsed. If she was a spy or wanted to manipulate the races, I’d have to deal with Dima and her. The thought didn’t sit well with me but a time when qualms held me back from doing the necessary were long over.

I’d done my research on Adamo Falcone. Anything else would have been foolish. But he still surprised me. The photos I’d found of him in the Darknet had made him look younger, more sunny-boy like with his unruly, slightly curled hair and the trimmed beard. Like the surfer boys I’d watched during a vacation in Portugal. I’d expected a spoiled brat who threw around his last name like a grenade, trying to impress, and with a name like Falcone he would have been certain to succeed.

I’d met more than enough men of that type before but I could already tell he wasn’t one of them. I’d seen a couple of videos of him in the cage. There hadn’t been many but I’d had trouble linking those brutal fights to the sunny-boy smile photos in the Darknet. Now I got it. Something dark lurked behind those brown eyes. I had a feeling he could switch from easy-going to ruthless brutality in a heartbeat. A Falcone after all. Their reputation carried far beyond their borders. Fear wasn’t my strong suit, so I’d never understood the reverence in the voices of so many people when they talked about the monsters from Vegas.

I didn’t doubt he carried the name Falcone like a weapon if required, but he seemed confident enough to control the racers with his own charisma. I watched him return to the shabby gas station. A couple of pit girls who’d gathered in the shadow of the roof followed him with their hungry eyes. A powerful name, money and the aura of a bad boy with the indisputable fact that Adamo had a body few girls would dismiss drew them in like a moth to the flame. His sweaty shirt clung to his chest, revealing the lines of muscle and an impressive six-pack, and his ass in the dark blue jeans wasn’t shabby either.

I knew he’d be calling Vegas now, asking for further instructions. Adamo may be the organizer of the races but his oldest brother and Capo Remo Falcone was a control freak and would keep a watchful eye over everything. Two Russians showing up in their territory definitely required a family chat. My pulse picked up thinking of Remo but I squashed my anxiety. This wasn’t a sprint, it was a marathon.

Dima stalked toward me. “This is bad. You know that, right?” he whispered in Russian.

“We’ll see,” I replied, not bothering to lower my voice. Soon everyone would realize we were Russians, why try to hide it?

“We should call your father in case things go badly. I can’t protect you alone.”

“No,” I clipped. “Remember your promise, Dima.”

“I do. And the first oath I ever made was to protect you.”

“We’ll be fine.” I didn’t feel the same amount of confidence my voice conveyed. Adamo hadn’t been overly hostile, and I had a feeling Remo wouldn’t hurt me. I wasn’t completely sure about Dima’s safety, but every attempt to make him leave my side had been futile. Torture or death weren’t my main concern though. I didn’t want to be sent away. I needed to get to know Adamo Falcone, get him to trust me so he’d tell me everything I wanted to know. But for that to happen, I had to become part of the race circuit.