Dare To Run (The Sons of Steel Row #1)(97)

To everyone at Penguin who has worked or will work on this book, thank you for being such a great company to work with. You all rock!

Lastly, to anyone reading this: Thank you. I wouldn’t be here without you. I’ll see you next time.





Read on for a sneak peek at the next

heart-pounding novel

in New York Times bestselling author

Jen McLaughlin’s

Sons of Steel Row series . . .



Coming soon from





CHAPTER 1





CHRIS




Sometimes you had to take a look at your life—a good, hard, brutally honest look—and admit that somewhere along the way, you f*cked up big-time. Just as important, sometimes you had to accept that the reason you were in an alley, bleeding and dying behind a busted-up Laundromat, was because . . . those choices you made? The screwups, the wrong turns, all the things you wish you could take back?

Yeah. Those were the reasons why you deserved this.

To die alone as violently as you lived.

I turned my head to spit out blood, painting it across the dirty concrete wall next to me, and laughed at the almost smiley face it made, because why the hell not? But my laugh made my aching ribs hurt more than before, so it ended on a groan. Clutching my ribs, I gingerly rolled over and glowered up at the sky. The uneven cement under my back dug into my already aching spine. The docks were nearby, the smell of week-old garbage and rotting rat corpses surrounded me.

The moon was absent tonight, and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen in the sky. The stars shone down on me—never changing, always steady—mocking me with their bright futures. While I probably wouldn’t last the night.

Because I tried to kill my best friend . . .

And he let me live.

Lucas Donahue should’ve killed me, instead of just shooting me and cracking my ribs in self-defense. He was the closest thing I had to a brother and I’d engineered a bloody coup that had nearly cost him everything. He should have shot me down in cold blood, should have put me down like the rabid dog I was. I deserved it. But instead, he showed me mercy. He let me walk away.

What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

The moment he’d let me walk out of his apartment with a crumpled-up, bloody note in my hand giving me everything I wanted, I knew I made a huge mistake. I should never have attacked my blood brother to get ahead in a gang that—more likely than not—would end up killing me anyway. I’d stupidly wanted to prove to Pops that I could be the man he wanted me to be.

Cold. Ruthless. A killer.

I was all those things, but not to Lucas.

Betraying Lucas was the single biggest regret in my life. Normally, I didn’t wallow in the what-ifs or the shouldabeens. I didn’t waste my damn time with what I could have done, or what I could have been. But if I could go back in time and undo all the shit I’d done to Lucas . . .

Man, I would turn that damn clock back so quickly, it’d snap in half.

The bloodstained note in my pocket burned against my thigh. It named me Lucas’s successor, just like I’d wanted. And just like I’d wanted, Lucas was out of the picture, out of the gang. When his younger brother, Scotty, showed up, gun in hand, at his place, I knew that no matter the outcome, I wouldn’t win.

But truth be told, even before that, I’d known I’d made a mistake.

Lucas had looked at me with hope, thinking I’d come to help him, and a part of me died back in that apartment with the rest of the men who dared to attack Lucas. When he had realized I was the mastermind all along . . .

There’d been no coming back from that.

It had been too late.

Too late to say, “You know what, man? Never mind. We’re cool.” The second Lucas had found out I was trying to kill him to move up the ranks—I’d known I was a dead man, whether he pulled the trigger on his gun or not. Angry at what I had become, I’d lashed out at Lucas. Tried to get him to pop me to put me out of my misery. But he hadn’t. He’d done the honorable thing and let me live. He hadn’t wanted to kill me, even after all the shit I’d done to him. He’d told Scotty to let me walk away . . . and I had.

Now, with Scotty’s help, Lucas was gone.

Dead. Only he wasn’t. By now, he was probably miles outside Boston and away from this slum we called Steel Row—while I would die in the worst section of Southie, knowing I put power above brotherhood.

I should have lived the life that Lucas led. He was the type of guy who put friends first. Family first. The type of guy who saved a guy’s neck, even if that guy had just tried to kill him, because he’d made a promise he’d be blood brothers with him when they were kids.

And here I was, a f*cking fool.

Any minute now, my phone would ring with the news of Lucas’s “death,” and I would be expected to be shocked. Raging. Grief-stricken. And the thing was, even though I knew he was alive and well . . . I was all those things.

Because I’d become a monster.

I laughed again. “Rest in peace, Lucas Donahue.”

As if on cue, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Wincing, I dug my sore fingers into my pocket and pulled out my iPhone. Squinting at the screen, I sighed. It was Tate, the head of the Sons of Steel Row, my gang. Time to put on a good act. “Hello?”

“Where are you?” Tate asked, his voice hard.