We pass a nurses’ station and turn a corner, and the doctor stops outside a closed door. “Only family members allowed,” he says, glancing at Frankie and Caesar.

“We’re all family,” I say before anyone else can speak. Ethan nods in agreement, and I can feel Frankie and Caesar standing behind me in the hallway. Dr. Lewis just returns Ethan’s nod and opens the door.

Inside lies Uncle Gavin, an oxygen tube taped to his face, an IV line snaking from the back of one hand to a drip bag. His eyes are closed and he looks even grayer in the fluorescent light than he did on the stretcher at the airport.

Dr. Lewis checks a monitor that quietly beeps, announcing that my uncle’s heart is still beating. “Five minutes,” he murmurs, then leaves. Strangely, I miss the doctor once he’s gone, and we all stand silently in the room as if we’re in a church waiting for the priest to show up and begin the service.

I stare at Uncle Gavin lying in his bed. He’s not supposed to be here. He should be sitting behind his massive, messy desk in his office above Ronan’s, the bar he owns in Midtown. Many times I’ve stood in front of that desk as he’s torn me a new one or, more rarely, said something gruffly approving. He took us in, me and Ethan, after our parents were killed. Our mom had cut him off years ago because “he made bad choices.” Later Ethan and I learned that Uncle Gavin is a sort of jack-of-all-trades for the Atlanta underworld. Need to unload some stolen jewelry? Get a fake passport? Learn which city council member or judge would be receptive to bribery? Uncle Gavin is your guy. Frankie’s father Ruben was my uncle’s right-hand man, and now Frankie works for him, following in his father’s footsteps. Caesar does too, using his technological wizardry to bring Uncle Gavin’s business into the twenty-first century. For a short time Ethan worked for our uncle, too, until he went to college and left that life behind.

And me? Uncle Gavin took a long, hard look at me, like a sculptor examining a block of marble, and then he helped chisel and shape me into the person I am today—a hunter. It wasn’t easy. I was an ungrateful bitch to Uncle Gavin when Ethan and I moved in with him. He repaid me by teaching me how to survive and giving me a purpose. And now he’s lying unconscious in a hospital bed.