Chapter 1 1

Avery POV

The smell of brine and rotting wood hit me first, followed by the sickening sensation of rough, unwashed hands sliding up my bare thighs.

"Never thought I'd get to taste a Bolton *Principessa* (Princess)," a raspy voice sneered in the dark.

Foy. A bottom-feeding *Associate* who swept the floors of our Chicago docks.

I didn't scream. Years of medical training in Europe had taught me anatomy; growing up in a Mafia family had taught me survival. My blood felt like it was boiling, a literal fire raging beneath my skin, but my mind remained razor-sharp. My fingers brushed the damp concrete, closing around the wooden handle of an ice pick.

I snapped my eyes open. Twisting my body with a speed that caught him completely off guard, I drove the steel spike downward. It stopped a fraction of an inch deep into the corner of his eye.

Foy shrieked, his weight shifting. I flipped him, driving my knee ruthlessly into his throat to pin him against the wet floor.

"Who sent you?" I hissed, pressing the steel deeper.

"Hailey!" he sobbed, his hands clawing uselessly at my knee. "Your cousin Hailey!"

I yanked the pick out, leaving him writhing and bleeding on the floor. He would live. I needed him alive as a witness.

I staggered to my feet, my vision blurring red. The heat inside me was escalating to a lethal degree. This wasn't a simple sedative. The rapid heartbeat, the suffocating heat melting my organs-it was hyperthermia. A military-grade chemical agent.

The memory of the welcome-back gala flashed through my mind. Hailey handing me a glass of champagne, her eyes fixed on my fiancé with naked, venomous ambition. She didn't just want to ruin my reputation and steal my arranged marriage; she wanted me to burn alive from the inside out in this abandoned refrigerated warehouse.

I made a silent vow. *Vendetta*. She would pay in blood.

But first, I had to survive.

I dragged my heavy limbs toward the walk-in freezer at the back of the warehouse. I threw my entire weight against the frosted iron door, hauling it open. The sub-zero air hit me like a divine blessing, but the freezer wasn't empty.

Between the hanging carcasses of slaughtered beef, a man sat on a metal bench. He was shirtless, his heavily scarred chest rising and falling in shallow, rigid breaths. He radiated a terrifying, unnatural cold, his muscles locked in what looked like agonizing paralysis.

"Leave," he ground out.

It was a *Don's Command*, a lethal order that demanded absolute obedience. Even paralyzed by whatever chemical agony he was enduring, Demetrius Maddox, the Don of the Maddox family and the undisputed king of the Chicago underworld, oozed pure, murderous authority.

But the fire in my veins was turning my brain to ash. He was freezing. I was burning. He was my only antidote.

Ignoring the lethal promise in his dark eyes, I lunged.

My burning body crashed into his rigid, freezing chest, sending us both tumbling to the frost-covered floor. A violent hiss escaped his lips as my feverish skin met his icy flesh-a twisted, agonizing relief for us both. My trembling fingers slid down his rigid abdomen, closing over the cold metal buckle of his leather belt.