I was sent to deceive the most dangerous mind in the family. He greeted me by the name my cover was built to hide.
I'm the best deep-cover agent the Bratva ever made. I have a face built for sincerity and eyes that give a mark back whatever he needs to see, and I've never once been read across a room - until Aldo Ferro looked up from his desk, said my real name, and told me to stop wasting his time pretending he couldn't see me.
He's the Carfagna consigliere: silver, exact, fifty years cold, the man who knows where every body is buried because he chose the ground. They sent me to seduce the family's secrets out of him. He knew on sight. And instead of putting me in the river, he gave me a word that could stop him, a mark on my throat that said mine, and the patience of a man who waits for the truth the way other men wait for a kettle.
I came to lie to him. The problem is what happens when a true-mate heat burns through nine years of training and bonds you to the one person you can no longer deceive - because the bond runs both ways, and now neither of us can lie, and I'm carrying a consequence that blows my cover and makes me expendable to the people who hold my little brother's life.
There's a cleanup order with my name on it. There's a war I helped poison without meaning to. And there's a cold old man who has made the optimal play every day for fifty years, deciding, for the first time in his life, to lose on purpose - for me.
Two professional liars. One room where neither of them can lie. God help us both - because in the world of Saint Lazarus, the most dangerous man is never the one with the gun. He's the one with the patience, the memory, and nothing left inside him to reach. Until me.
