Chapter 1

"Fifty strikes," Floyd ordered, his voice devoid of warmth.

I knelt in the freezing snow, watching the man I had taken a bullet for five years ago stand beside his new fiancée, Jaylah.

Because Jaylah tore her engagement dress and blamed me, Floyd let his men beat me until my face was unrecognizable.

But that was just the beginning of my hell.

To save his alliance with Jaylah's family, he drained my blood to save her mother, ignoring my own fading pulse.

When Jaylah lied that I tried to burn her, Floyd forced me to thrust my hands-my architect's hands-into glowing coals until the flesh melted.

He stripped me of my name, my protection, and finally, my life.

"You are a liability," he said, pushing me into the freezing pool with a skimmer pole.

He watched me drown with the same detached interest he used to inspect firearms.

My lungs burned, and my heart turned to ice. I died hating him more than I ever loved him.

I thought it was the end.

But then, I gasped.

Air rushed into my lungs.

I wasn't in the water. I was sitting at a drafting table, five years before the nightmare began.

My hands were smooth. No scars. No burns.

And when Floyd Meyers approached me on the quad, smiling like the boy I used to love, I didn't smile back.

I ran.

Chapter 1

The first time Floyd Meyers looked at me with the eyes of an executioner instead of a guardian, I realized a terrifying truth: saving a monster's life five years ago didn't buy his love. It only purchased a front-row seat to my own destruction.

I was on my knees in the snow.

The iron gates of the Meyers estate loomed above me, black bars slicing against the slate-grey Chicago sky.

My knees were already numb, sinking into slush that had been churned into a dirty brown by the exhaust of the convoy that had just swept inside.

Floyd was the Capo.

He was the ghost who had decapitated the Russian syndicate in a single night last winter, the man whose mere whisper made grown men cross the street. He was the man who was supposed to be my husband.

Now, he stood on the other side of the gate.

He looked impeccable in his charcoal suit, the wool coat draped over his shoulders making him look like a king surveying a beggar at his doorstep.

Beside him stood Jaylah Ryan.

She was wrapped in white fur, her arm looped through his, her smile sharp enough to cut glass. At her feet lay a heap of emerald silk.

It was the engagement dress.

The dress that was supposed to symbolize the union between the Meyers and Ryan crime families. The dress she had just torn with her own manicured claws before accusing me of sabotage.

"Fifty," Floyd said.

His voice was a low rumble, devoid of the warmth that used to greet me when I brought him coffee in his study. The wind bit at my exposed cheeks, but his tone was colder.

"Floyd, please," I whispered, my teeth chattering violently. "I didn't touch it."

He didn't blink.

"You insulted the future of this Family. You insulted my fiancée. Fifty strikes for the disrespect."

He nodded to the Enforcer standing beside me.

It was Luca, a man I had known since I was a teenager, a man who had once taught me how to drive without grinding the gears.

Luca looked hesitant, his eyes darting to Floyd, pleading silently.

"Boss, she's..."

"Did I stutter?" Floyd asked.

The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. This was the Don he had become. Ruthless. Efficient. Blind to anything but the acquisition of power.

Luca turned to me, his expression pained.

"I'm sorry, Elizebeth," he muttered.

The first slap cracked against my cheek like a whip.

My head snapped to the side. The pain was a bright explosion of white light behind my eyes. I tasted copper instantly.

I didn't cry out.

I had learned a long time ago that tears didn't move men like Floyd Meyers; they only annoyed them.

Two.

Three.

Four.

By the tenth strike, my face felt like it was on fire, a stark, agonizing contrast to the freezing snow soaking through my jeans.

Floyd watched.

He didn't flinch. He didn't look away. He watched the violence with the same detached interest he used when inspecting a shipment of illegal firearms.

Jaylah looked bored. She checked her nails.

Twenty.

My vision blurred. I swayed, catching myself with a hand in the snow. The cold burned my palm, grounding me in the misery.

I looked up at Floyd through swollen eyes.

Through the haze of pain, I remembered the bullet I took for him. I remembered the blood I spilled on the pavement five years ago, the scar that ran down my back, the nerve damage that still made my hands tremble when I was tired.

He had held my hand in the ambulance then. He had sworn on his mother's grave that I would always be safe.

Thirty.

That vow was dead.

It died the moment he needed the Ryan territory to secure his throne.

Forty.

I was just collateral damage now. A ward of the state. A leftover. An obstacle.

Fifty.

The final blow knocked me sideways.

I collapsed into the slush, gasping for air, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth and choking me.

The gate buzzed.

The butler, a man named Henderson who used to sneak me extra cookies, walked out. He didn't look at me. He couldn't.

He threw the torn emerald dress onto my shivering body.

A small sewing kit landed in the snow next to my face.

"Fix it," Floyd said.

His voice came from above, distant and godlike.

"You stay there until every thread is perfect. If it isn't ready by dawn, don't bother coming back inside."

He turned his back on me.

He walked away with the woman who had framed me, leaving me bleeding in the snow to mend the symbol of my own replacement.