Chapter 1 Chapter 1: The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

The scream died in Elena Hayes's throat the moment she saw the gun.

She'd only cut through the warehouse district to save fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes that would get her home before the leftover pasta dried out completely, before her feet gave out in these torture-device heels, before another day of disappointment fully settled into her bones. The interview had gone poorly—another "we'll call you" that meant "don't hold your breath"—and all she wanted was her couch, her cat, and a bottle of wine she couldn't afford.

Instead, she got a front-row seat to murder.

Elena froze behind a rusted shipping container, her breath crystallizing in the October air. Through the gap between metal and concrete, she watched three men in expensive suits surround a fourth man on his knees. The kneeling man was crying, pleading in Italian she didn't understand, his words tumbling over each other in desperate prayer. Blood already darkened his shirt—this wasn't the beginning of whatever hell she'd stumbled into.

"You stole from me, Marco." The voice came from the shadows beyond her limited sightline, smooth as aged whiskey and twice as dangerous. American accent, educated, with something old-world underneath. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

"Signore, per favore—I have children—"

"You should have thought of them before you skimmed three million from my shipment."

Elena's hand trembled as she pressed it against the cold metal, trying to make herself smaller, invisible. Her phone was in her purse. She could call 911. She should call 911. But her fingers wouldn't cooperate, frozen like the rest of her as the scene unfolded with the terrible inevitability of a nightmare.

The man in the shadows stepped into a shaft of moonlight filtering through the broken skylight, and Elena's heart forgot how to beat.

He was beautiful in the way a blade was beautiful—all clean lines and lethal purpose. Tall, with dark hair swept back from a face that could have been carved from marble by an artist who understood both angels and demons. His suit probably cost more than her annual salary, fitted perfectly to broad shoulders and a lean, powerful frame. But it was his eyes that trapped her, even from this distance—dark, cold, and utterly merciless.

This was a man who had never been told no. A man who bent the world to his will or broke it trying.

"Please." Marco's voice cracked. "My daughter—she's only six—"

The beautiful man didn't even blink. He raised his hand in a casual gesture, almost bored, and one of the other men lifted his gun.

Don't look. Close your eyes. Turn away.

But Elena couldn't. She was paralyzed, a rabbit in a snare, watching as—

The gunshot cracked through the warehouse like thunder.

Marco's body crumpled. The sound he made—wet, final—would haunt her forever.

Elena's purse slipped from her numb fingers, and the world went into slow motion as it hit the concrete with a sound that might as well have been another gunshot. Her lipstick rolled across the floor, the metallic tube catching the moonlight like a beacon announcing her presence.

Every head turned toward her hiding spot.

"We have a witness." One of the suited men reached for his weapon.

"Wait." That voice again, the one from the shadows, now edged with something that might have been curiosity. "Bring her to me."

Run.

The thought finally broke through her paralysis, and Elena ran. Her heels clattered against concrete as she bolted for the exit she'd entered through, her breath sobbing in her chest. Behind her, she heard footsteps—multiple sets, organized, unhurried. They weren't chasing her. They were herding her.

She burst through a door into another section of the warehouse, this one darker, filled with crates stacked three stories high. A maze. She could lose them in here, find another way out, get to the street, to people, to light and safety and—

A hand closed around her arm, yanking her backward with enough force to snap her head back. Elena screamed, finally, the sound ripping from her throat as she struggled against the iron grip.

"Quite the runner," her captor said, spinning her around. Young, maybe thirty, with a scar bisecting his left eyebrow and eyes that held no more warmth than his boss's. "Boss wants to see you."

"Let me go!" Elena drove her heel down on his instep and threw her elbow back the way her self-defense instructor had taught her in that community center class three years ago. It connected with something solid. The man grunted but didn't release her.

"Feisty." He twisted her arm behind her back, professional, controlled. "He'll like that."

They dragged her back through the warehouse, past Marco's cooling corpse, into the circle of moonlight where the beautiful monster waited. Up close, he was even more devastating—and more terrifying. Over six feet, with the kind of presence that sucked oxygen from the air. His dark eyes tracked her approach with an intensity that made her skin prickle.

"Let her go, Enzo." His voice wrapped around her like silk hiding steel.

The grip on her arm disappeared. Elena stumbled but caught herself, refusing to fall at this man's feet. She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze even as every instinct screamed at her to submit, to grovel, to beg for her life the way Marco had.

For a long moment, he simply studied her. His gaze traveled from her disheveled blonde hair to her wrinkled interview suit to her broken heel, taking inventory with the thoroughness of a man who noticed everything. When his eyes returned to hers, something flickered in their depths—surprise, maybe, or recognition of something he hadn't expected.

"What's your name?" he asked, his tone almost conversational, as if they'd met at a cocktail party rather than over a dead body.

Elena's mouth was desert-dry. "Elena. Elena Hayes."

"Elena." He tested her name like wine, rolling it on his tongue. "What are you doing in my warehouse, Elena Hayes?"

"I was just—" Her voice cracked. "Shortcut. I was taking a shortcut home. I didn't see anything. I won't say anything. Please, I just want to go home."

"You didn't see anything?" His lips curved in something that might have been a smile on a different man, in a different life. "We both know that's not true."

One of his men stepped forward. "Dante, we should—"

Dante. His name fell into place like a key in a lock, and Elena's blood turned to ice. Dante Valeri. Even she had heard of him, whispers in the city about the young king who'd united the fractured mafia families under his rule through brilliance and brutality in equal measure. The man who made people disappear. The monster parents invoked to frighten children into obedience.

And she had just witnessed him commit murder.

"Please." The word escaped as barely a whisper.

Dante stepped closer, so close she could smell his cologne—something expensive and dark with notes of cedar and smoke. He reached out, and Elena flinched, but his fingers only brushed a strand of hair from her face with surprising gentleness. The touch burned.

"You have two choices, Elena Hayes," he said softly, his breath warm against her temple. "You can die here, quickly, next to the man who betrayed me. Or—" His hand moved to cup her jaw, tilting her face up to meet his eyes, and what she saw there stopped her heart. Not mercy. Not kindness. Something far more dangerous: interest. "—you come with me, and we see what happens next."

Before she could answer, before she could even process the impossible choice he'd laid before her, Dante turned to his men and spoke two words that sealed her fate:

"Take her.”