Savage Lover

Part of the Brutal Birthright series, the novel is set in Old Town, Chicago, where two rival crime dynasties, the Italian Gallos and the Irish Griffins, have formed an uneasy alliance through the marriage of Aida Gallo to Callum Griffin, an alderman. The story follows Camille Rivera, a twenty-five-year-old mechanic, and Nero Gallo, the volatile son of Enzo Gallo, the head don of the Italian Mafia in Chicago.

Camille works at Axel Auto, a struggling repair shop owned by her father, Axel. She lives with Axel and her seventeen-year-old brother, Vic, in a cramped apartment above the garage. Camille's mother, a former stripper, dropped Vic on their doorstep as a toddler and never returned; Axel took him in, and Camille raised him. One night, Camille tracks Vic to a house party thrown by Levi Cargill, a trust fund drug dealer. At the party, Bella Page, Camille's old high school bully, mocks Camille's poverty and her mother's occupation. Nero intervenes, and he and Camille briefly bond over her red 1977 Trans Am. After dragging Vic out, Camille is pulled over on the drive home. When Officer Logan Schultz of the Organized Crime Division discovers MDMA pills in Vic's pocket and over a hundred more in his backpack, Camille claims all the drugs are hers to shield her underage brother.

The next day, Schultz coerces Camille into becoming a confidential informant, explaining that the charge carries a mandatory four-year prison sentence and threatening to charge Vic as an adult. He wants her to infiltrate Levi's operation and gather intelligence on the Gallo family. Camille reluctantly agrees, confronting Levi and volunteering to replace Vic as a dealer to stay in Levi's orbit. Meanwhile, she notices alarming changes in her father: persistent coughing, weight loss, and exhaustion.

Nero pitches his father and eldest brother, Dante, the family's operations manager, on developing the abandoned South Works site, a 415-acre former steel mill on Chicago's waterfront. When a meeting with the Griffins reveals that both families lack the capital, Nero settles on an alternative: robbing the vault at Alliance Bank, owned by Raymond Page, Bella's father, which stores gold, diamonds, and undeclared cash for the city's wealthiest citizens.

Camille and Nero's paths keep crossing. At illegal street races, Camille beats Bella in a race. When police sirens approach, Nero throws Camille into his Mustang and leads the cops on a chase before hiding in a parking garage, where he calms her panic attack by massaging her hands. He kisses her abruptly and intensely, then pulls away as though nothing happened. Both are privately shaken.

Nero exploits Bella's infatuation to case Alliance Bank, planting a hidden camera in the vault room during a tour. Bella mentions that a massive diamond stashed by the late Bratva (Russian mafia) boss Kolya Kristoff sits unclaimed in the vault. Camille, who has gone to the bank to confront Raymond about possibly being Vic's father, spots Nero and Bella in the lobby and feels a stab of jealousy.

Two crises converge. A biopsy confirms that Camille's father has stage three adenocarcinoma, and surgery is recommended, but the family has no insurance. Separately, while studying epigenetics with Vic, Camille learns he has distichiasis, a rare genetic mutation causing a double row of eyelashes, a trait she recognizes in both Bella and Raymond Page.

At another of Levi's parties, Nero gets into a fight and is knocked unconscious by Sione, Levi's Samoan bodyguard. Camille throws herself over Nero to stop the beating, drags him to her apartment, and cleans his wounds. When he wakes, they kiss tenderly and lie together for hours without pushing further.

The emotional walls break down completely at a bonfire on Osterman Beach. Levi forces Camille to swallow an MDMA pill to prove her loyalty. She steals strands of Bella's hair for a later DNA comparison, then approaches Nero and speaks honestly about her father's cancer, her financial desperation, and her feelings for him. Walking along the lakeshore, Nero reveals that when he was ten, he lay beside his dying mother and watched her suffocate, too paralyzed with fear to call for help. Camille tells him it was not his fault. They are physically intimate, but Nero refuses to go further while she is under the influence. Camille also confesses that Schultz coerced her into being a CI. Nero is furious, not at being informed on, but at the threat to Camille.

A DNA test using Bella's hair and Vic's toothbrush confirms that Raymond Page is Vic's biological father. When Camille asks Raymond for $50,000 for Vic's education in exchange for silence, Raymond writes a check for zero dollars and threatens to have her tortured if she contacts him again.

Camille visits Nero's house and sees his underground car collection, including the Talbot-Lago Grand Sport, his most prized unfinished restoration. They have sex for the first time on its hood. She asks directly if he is planning to rob Alliance Bank, and he confirms it. She insists on joining as the getaway driver, refusing a handout. Over the following weeks, they plan the heist while their relationship deepens. Nero attends her father's surgery and quietly covers the medical bills. He recruits Mason Becker, a trusted associate, for equipment, an alarm specialist named Jonesy for electronics, and his youngest brother, Sebastian. Nero also investigates Schultz's background and traces the unsolved 2005 murder of Schultz's father, a police officer, to Daniel Brodie, now the chief of the Organized Crime Division and Schultz's own boss.

On the night of the robbery, Camille draws Schultz away by claiming she has found Levi's drug lab. Wired with a microphone, she convinces Levi to show her his basement operation, but signal jammers block the transmission. When the wire is spotted, Levi orders Sione to kill her. Camille fights back using self-defense techniques Nero taught her, stabs Sione with Nero's switchblade, and escapes after police break down the door, hot-wiring a police van outside.

At Alliance Bank, Nero, Sebastian, Mason, and Jonesy execute the heist. Nero and Sebastian cross a ladder bridging a six-story gap between buildings, descend through the elevator shaft and air ducts, and enter the vault wearing heat-reflective suits to bypass thermal sensors. Using a code obtained from hidden camera footage, Nero opens the vault and collects gold, gemstones, and the Winter Diamond, worth approximately fifty million dollars. On their way out, a security guard catches them at gunpoint, but Dante, who arrived despite initially refusing, chokes the guard unconscious. Camille pulls up in the stolen police van, and Nero throws smoke grenades as she drives through the cordon by blending in with responding squad cars.

Nero leads Camille to a parking garage where the Grand Sport sits fully restored and painted the oxblood red she once suggested. He tells her that every emotion he ever felt is nothing compared to what he feels for her and asks if she could ever love him. She says she already does.

Nero breaks into Schultz's apartment and offers a trade: a VHS tape proving that Chief Brodie murdered Schultz's father, in exchange for Schultz permanently leaving Camille alone. Schultz agrees. In the closing chapters, Vic thrives academically and sells original beats online. Camille tells him about his biological father, but Vic asks to revisit the subject after graduation. Nero informs Camille that her mother died of an overdose; she grieves but finds peace. He brings her to a rooftop dinner at the Gallo mansion, where the family, including Enzo, Dante, Sebastian, Aida, Callum, and Greta, the family's longtime housekeeper, welcomes her warmly. As they drive home, they pass a police procession for Chief Brodie, who has been shot dead. Nero's knowing expression implies he understands what Schultz did with the information. He tells Camille she is his favorite person in the world, and she tells him the same.