Chapter 1
The icy lake swallowed me whole.
In the final second before I lost consciousness, I saw the man I had only known online. The one I’d come here to meet for the first time, running away without looking back.
He was cursing under his breath.
“Fuck. What a psycho.”
When I opened my eyes again, I was in the backseat of a car.
A man was wrapping a blanket around my soaked body.
His touch wasn’t gentle. If anything, it was rough, impatient.
I was shaking from the cold. When I looked up and saw his face, my entire body froze.
Damon.
My best friend Chloe’s fiancé.
One of the three most powerful mafia bosses in New York. A Don known for being ruthless, untouchable… and completely uninterested in women.
I parted my lips, my voice coming out hoarse.
“Don Damon… thank you for saving me.”
He looked at me with no expression at all, and I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or annoyed.
“Chloe’s friend?”
I nodded.
One corner of his mouth lifted, but the smile never reached his eyes.
“You owe me your life.”
The heat in the car was turned all the way up, but I still felt cold to the bone, shivering uncontrollably.
I didn’t know what to say.
Lucas and I had been forced into a political marriage between mafia families. Before the wedding, we’d signed an agreement: no interference, no expectations, no love.
His heart had always belonged to Chloe, his first love. As for me, the wife he had married, I may as well have been invisible.
I didn’t love him either. I just wanted someone I could truly fall in love with, even once.
He tacitly agreed, and that became our arrangement. After the wedding, we would each do as we pleased.
“As long as you don’t come back carrying another man’s bastard, do whatever the hell you want.”
Those were his exact words.
So I went looking for love online.
Today had been my first time meeting one of those men in person. We’d agreed to meet by the lake.
In his profile pictures, he looked like a handsome blond guy with a bright, boyish smile.
In real life, he was a greasy middle-aged creep with a bloated face and wandering hands.
When he started getting handsy, I fought back. And in the struggle, he shoved me straight into the water.
I hadn’t expected Damon to be the one to save me.
Silence filled the car.
I clutched the blanket tighter, too nervous to look at him.
Then suddenly, a cold hand touched my cheek.
I went rigid and jerked my head up.
Damon was staring at me like a predator sizing up prey. Like he wanted to swallow me whole.
“What’s your name?”
“Iris… Iris.”
He repeated it under his breath, his thumb slowly stroking my skin.
“Iris.”
I was too scared to move.
Everyone in our world knew the rumors. Damon had a condition. Some private defect. He had no interest in women.
His engagement to Chloe had only ever been a business alliance between two powerful families.
But now, the way he looked at me was full of aggression and possessiveness.
I could feel an unfamiliar masculine presence closing in on me, dangerous and overwhelming.
His hand slid from my cheek to my throat… then lower, to my collarbone.
That was when I finally snapped out of it and shoved him away.
“Damon, have some respect!”
“I’m Lucas’s wife! And I’m your fiancée’s best friend!”
He hit the door with the force of my push, but instead of getting angry, he laughed.
Low. Quiet. Wrong.
In the cramped space, the sound was strangely unsettling.
“Lucas’s wife?”
He straightened slowly, then leaned toward me again.
“What he can’t give you… I can.”
He cornered me against the seat, leaving me nowhere to retreat.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He bent close, his warm breath brushing the shell of my ear as he spoke, word by word.
“Be my woman.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
“Are you insane? I’m married!”
“So?”
He gripped my chin and forced me to look at him.
“Iris… my body responds to you.”
The blunt, shameless words drained all the color from my face.
So the rumors were true.
And I was the only exception.
Was this supposed to be my luck or my curse?
All I felt was how utterly absurd it was.
“Let me out of the car!”
But Damon just locked the doors.
“From today on, you belong to me.”
“I don’t care whether you want that or not.”
The Bentley shot forward.
And just like that, I was carried toward a darkness I couldn’t escape.
He took me to one of his private House.
Everything about it was unfamiliar.
He threw me onto the bed and looked down at me as if I were an object he’d just acquired.
“Has Lucas touched you?”
I bit my lip and said nothing.
His patience ran out in an instant. He reached for my clothes and started tearing at them.
“I asked you a question.”
I struggled, crying, twisting under him.
“No! He hasn’t! It’s a marriage in name only!”
Damon stopped.
The madness in his eyes receded just enough for something else to take its place.
Sick satisfaction.
“Good.”
He let go of me, rose to his feet, and adjusted his wrinkled collar as though he hadn’t nearly ripped me apart. In seconds, he was back to that cold, decent calm.
“From now on, you’ll live here.”
“I’ll have people take care of you.”
“Without my permission, you don’t take one step out of this house.”
I collapsed on the bed, trembling all over.
“This is illegal imprisonment!”
He looked down at me, all contempt.
“Then call the police.”
His voice was full of mockery.
“Let’s see whether Lucas saves you… or whether my methods are stronger.”
That was when the last of my hope died.
Lucas would never cross Damon for me. If anything, he’d be relieved to have me disappear.
And my own family had long since fallen from power. We were in no position to stand against Damon’s empire.
I had become a bird locked in a gilded cage.
And Damon was the hunter with the key.
