Love your country. Fear your government. Know your enemy."You cannot learn what you have learned and remain unchanged."As a bodyguard, Atticus Kodiak once protected his clients against professional killers like Alena Cizkova, a.k.a. Drama. Now he is taking lessons from the world's premier assassin."I am not a murderer."It begins with a shocking betrayal, a brutal ambush, and the murder of a friend. Atticus is about to discover that he's been falsely identified as one of The Ten—a short list of the world's most wanted assassins. And to survive, he's going to have to become exactly what they're accusing him of being: a stone-cold killer."Yes, you are. You have only to meet your first victim…" --

A mystery caller sends Leonid McGill to an uptown address 'just to check a girl's okay'. There's no explanation - just a name - Angelique - a reward, and the chilling knowledge that he's working for Rinaldo Alphonse, the most feared man in New York. What LT finds is a crime scene. A girl lies with her face blown off, her assassin felled by a knife. But the dead girl isn't the one LT was sent to find, and her killer's injuries don't make sense. The next day Alphonse comes calling: LT must find Angelique before the assassin's assassin tracks her down. Alphonse isn't the only one who wants a bit of LT's time - the NYPD, finding his appearance too convenient, think they can finally put away the thorn in their side. But why do so many people want a piece of the apparently normal, clean-living Angelique? And why is the mafia coming after McGill, linking his sons - shy Dmitri and streetwise Twill - to the escape of a sex trafficked Belarussian girl. As both plots career towards a thrilling finale, McGill must put his street know-how and book of lethal contacts to the test, while haunted by the re-appearance of a face from his crooked past and wife Katrina's continued infidelities (this time it's her son's best friend).

In an ill-timed moment of generosity, a professional hit man knocks off a man beating his girlfriend, but the murdered boyfriend is the brother of a southern Florida drug kingpin, and the killer endangers his own life.