**This is a recap of what happened in book one for anyone who needs a refresher or wants to start this book without reading the first.**

*Spoilers for Flames of the Forgotten** 

In Flames of the Forgotten, high school senior Sammy Morgan comes home from school when she finds her usually absent and drunken father, Jamie, in a panic, packing her bags.

Jamie drives Sammy away into the night. He confesses he got into trouble gambling at a club in the city. He took a few loans from the Russo family, who own the crime syndicate in Chicago. When they threatened Sammy's life if he didn't pay up, a local patron at the club Franky, offered to help Jamie. 

Franky once worked for a rival family, the Mancini's and knew of a large forest/hideout that was unknown and sitting in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. Franky convinced Jamie to leave Sammy there until the heat died down, and Jamie, in a panic, agreed. 

Sammy - thrust into the woods in Wisconsin and had to learn to survive and fend for herself. As she settled in, she sensed someone else there with her. She sought out this other person and found him.

Jackson Mancini was a rugged, smokey-eyed,surly guy who did not want her there but seemed to be trying to help her anyway. 

When Sam found Jax across the creek one day, they had a harrowing encounter with wolves that he saved her from. After this, they finally begin to bond and realize they needed each other to survive the winter. 

As they further warmed up to each other, Jax confessed that he is the son of Christina Mancini, the first-born daughter of the head of the Mancini family, and the son of Vincent (Vinny)Russo, the head of the Russo family. When Christina rejected Vinny's marriage proposal after becoming pregnant with Jackson, Vinny immediately married a woman named Meredith.  But, he made a promise he would groom Jackson to take over as his heir when he turned twenty if he wanted it.  Jax's parentage was kept a secret from almost everyone apart from the immediate families. 

Life went on, and both the Mancinis and the Russos did their thing for years until... 

The night of Jax's uncle Jack's wedding, when Jax was just fifteen, there was a terrible massacre led by his father, Vinny. On that night, Jax lost his uncle, his mom, and many other members of his family. Jax will never forgive Vinny for this. 

 Jax leaned on his uncle's right-hand man, Franky, to help him through that. Franky came up with a plan for Jax to fake his death and hide out until he was twenty. They planned for Jax to emerge at that time and enact a slow plot of revenge against Vinny. But as Jax got older, living in the woods changed him. All his mother, Christina, ever wanted was for Jax to be free of that life, and he started craving that not just for her but for himself. 

.. and then Sam showed up, left there in he woods, just like him,  Jax found himself compelled to protect her. 

Jax and Sam fall deeply in love while struggling to survive. Sam even saves Jax's life one terrifying night when he stays out too late in the frigid cold trying to feed them. It's not easy, and things get pretty dire, but the couple makes it through winter. They then plan to somehow get the money Jax is entitled to as a Mancini and escape together.

... But  when Franky comes to collect Jax he has grim news. The Russos are torturing Sam's dad. The only way to save him is for Jax to follow through with the revenge plan against Vinny.

Jax agrees to go, but only so they can save Sam's dad.  Sam painfully agrees to wait for Jax to return, and then they plan to ride off into the sunset together.

Two weeks after Jax leaves, a sudden forest fire stuns Sam. When the helicopter that sometimes flies over the woods dips down to rescue her, she has no choice but to leave and is pulled into the air on a rope ladder to end book one!