Adrian Blake had spent the last two months in a very personal kind of hell.
Not the chaotic, blood-soaked battlefield most people imagined when they thought of war. Not the kind filled with endless gunfire, screaming men, or rivers of spilled blood. Those things were almost easy for a man like Adrian, predictable, straightforward, manageable with cold calculation and ruthless efficiency.
What Adrian truly hated was the politics.
The endless lies wrapped in silk suits and expensive smiles. The delicate negotiations where every word was a hidden dagger. The fake camaraderie exchanged between powerful men who were secretly planning to bury each other the moment the slightest opportunity appeared. For eight long, grueling weeks, he had been forced to play a high-stakes game with one of the most dangerous and influential criminal networks in the Western underworld.
