He's Done Being Nice

Jason Hayes wakes into a second run at his own life. In the first one he was timid, took every insult without answering, and gave up whatever anyone demanded. This time he decides he will be the villain. He is a waiter in a restaurant when he starts, and he moves up through the criminal side of the city from there, beating the people who used to push him around and matching wits with his father-in-law, who runs the underworld and is treated as its emperor. Jason keeps one rule and repeats it: anyone who touches his people will have no place left in the city. Each step up raises what he stands to lose, and the choices in front of him stop having a way back. Going from a coward to a man nobody dares approach turns out to be a road paved with blood and other people's schemes, and Jason learns that when he stops stepping aside, everyone else does.