A bleeding stranger shoved a gun beneath my chin and ordered me to leave him and his infant twins to die in a dark Boston alley. He swore the police were hunting him, but by sunrise I would learn the truth—the wounded man I saved wasn't fleeing the city's most powerful empire. He was the one who ruled it.

Dawn broke over the Boston harbor, painting the slate-gray sky in bruised shades of violet and amber.

Inside the back room of Ali’s Diner, the air smelled of stale coffee, antiseptic wipes, and iron-rich blood. Ali stood guard by the back alley door, peering through the vertical blinds every few seconds, while I worked feverishly under the harsh glare of a drop-light to stitch together Daniel’s torn flesh.

“Hold still,” I muttered, pulling the suture tight through his skin.

Daniel didn’t even flinch. His pain tolerance was inhuman. He lay propped against a stack of canned goods, watching my every move with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

“You’re surprisingly steady for a waitress,” Daniel said, his voice lower now, devoid of the earlier panic.

“When you grow up bouncing through five different foster homes in Dorchester, you learn how to stitch up your own cuts before the social workers notice,” I replied flatly, snipping the thread with a pair of kitchen shears.

Daniel’s expression shifted. A flicker of something unreadable crossed his icy blue eyes. “You’re tougher than you look, Anna Bennett.”

“Survival does that to a person,” I shot back, wiping a streak of blood from my forehead with the back of my wrist. “Now, back to your little family drama. You said the men who hunted you down work for the Sterling Syndicate. As in Sterling Global Enterprises? The multi-billion-dollar shipping and real estate empire that owns half of downtown Boston?”

“I am Sterling Global Enterprises,” Daniel corrected quietly.

I froze, the cloth rag dropping from my hand. I stared down at the bleeding, dirt-stained man lying on Ali’s flour sacks.

“Right,” I scoffed dryly. “And I’m the Queen of England. The CEO of Sterling Global is Julian Sterling—a billionaire philanthropist who graces the cover of Forbes every month. He’s the golden boy of Boston society.”

“Julian is my twin brother,” Daniel said, his jaw tightening. “Or rather, the brother who tried to assassinate me last night so he could seize sole control of our father’s trust and the entire conglomerate. The twins... they’re my children. The legal heirs to the Sterling estate. As long as they draw breath, Julian cannot legally consolidate the board.”

Ali turned away from the window, his face pale. “Holy Mother of God. You’re Daniel Sterling. The reclusive one. The one the tabloids said went off the grid in Europe two years ago.”

“I was in Europe protecting my wife,” Daniel said, his voice dropping an octave, heavy with a sudden, crushing grief. “Until she died under ‘mysterious circumstances’ three months ago. I came back to Boston in secret to protect my children. I trusted Julian’s inner circle. That was my mistake.”

The weight of his words hung in the stale air of the pantry.

Suddenly, a loud, metallic bang echoed from the front of the diner.