THE MASSIVE BLACK DOG WAITED IN A CHICAGO ALLEY FOR A DEAD CRIME BOSS — A SINGLE MOTHER FED IT, NEVER KNOWING THE MAN WAS STILL ALIVE AND COMING HOME

Chapter 5

The first night Logan was strong enough to walk, he didn’t go looking for weapons. He didn’t go looking for answers. He went looking for the alley.

His body screamed with every step. The wound in his side had healed poorly, the stitches pulling against skin that was still raw and tender. The wound in his shoulder ached with a deep, bone-level throb that made him want to cry out. But he pulled the collar of his coat up to hide his face, kept his head down, and moved through the empty streets of Chicago like a ghost who had forgotten he was supposed to be dead.

The city looked different now. The streets he had once ruled, the corners where his men had stood watch, the businesses that had paid him tribute — all of it belonged to someone else now. The papers had declared him dead. The underworld had moved on. The empire he had built with blood and fear was being divided among the vultures he had once called allies.

He didn’t care about any of it. Not tonight.

When he finally turned into the alley behind Bridgeport, his heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. He stopped at the mouth of the passage, one hand braced against the cold brick, and stared into the darkness.

For one long, suffocating moment, he saw nothing. Just damp walls and frozen garbage and snow that had turned gray with city grime.

Then he saw the shape at the far end.

A dark mound lay curled against the wall, so thin that Logan almost didn’t recognize it. The dog had been a mountain of muscle and fur when he had last seen him. Now he was a skeleton wrapped in black, his ribs visible even from a distance, his head resting on his paws like he had given up on lifting it.

But when Logan spoke — just a whisper, just a name — the dog’s head snapped up so fast that his whole body stumbled.

“Brutus.”

The dog froze. His amber eyes locked onto the figure at the mouth of the alley, and for a moment, neither of them moved. The dog had lifted his head too many times over the past two weeks, had seen shadows that turned into nothing, had hoped and been disappointed so many times that he had stopped believing.

But this shadow was different. This shadow was real.

The dog’s tail began to move, a slow, uncertain wag that built into something wild and desperate. He tried to stand, his legs shaking beneath him, and when he finally found his feet, he stumbled forward. Then he ran. Not the graceful, powerful stride he had once had, but a clumsy, lurching charge, his weakened body careening through the snow like a ship about to sink.

Logan dropped to his knees.

The dog hit him with the full force of his weight, and Logan went down, his wounded side exploding with pain, but he didn’t care. He wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck and held on as Brutus buried his head into his chest, into his throat, into his hands, making sounds that were halfway between a whimper and a sob, his thin tail thrashing through the frozen air like a flag in a storm.

“Hey,” Logan whispered, his voice breaking. “Hey, boy. I’m here. I came back.”

The dog licked his face, his hands, his neck — anywhere he could reach — as if he was trying to memorize the smell of his man, as if he was afraid this was another dream and he would wake up alone again.

Logan pressed his forehead against the dog’s massive head and felt every rib rising beneath the black fur. Fourteen days of hunger. Fourteen days of cold. Fourteen days of waiting, and the dog had never left. The entire city had crossed Logan Hail off the list of the living, and this animal had refused to believe it.

He didn’t know how long they stayed there. Minutes. Hours. The cold seeped through his coat, through his skin, into his bones, and he didn’t care. He just held the dog and let the tears run down his face without bothering to wipe them away.

He was still kneeling there, his face buried in Brutus’s neck, when he heard the footsteps.