Chapter 1

I was exactly three thousand words away from eviction when the heir to the New York underworld smashed my laptop and offered me a job instead of an apology.

Dante Vitiello wanted me to write a memoir that would paint him as a saint.

I moved into his penthouse, thinking I could keep things professional. But when his arranged fiancée, the daughter of the Chicago Outfit, arrived, she didn't see an employee. She saw a threat.

She didn't just humiliate me; she leaked fake evidence to the press, branding me as a federal informant.

I woke up in a hospital bed with the word "RAT" plastered across every gossip site.

Sofia's guards were stationed outside my door, blocking even the nurses. I was a liability. A stain on the Vitiello name.

I knew how these stories ended. The Prince always chooses the Family. The Alliance is more important than the girl.

I was packing my bag, shaking with fear, ready to disappear into the night to save him from ruin.

But Dante didn't come to fire me. He walked into the boardroom where his father and the Chicago Boss were waiting for him to beg for forgiveness.

He looked at the crown that was his birthright, then he looked at the gun on the table.

He didn't kneel. He didn't apologize.

He slammed his weapon down, shattering a hundred-year alliance and forfeiting his empire with a single sentence.

"Keep the crown. I take the girl."

Chapter 1

Aria Sterling POV

I was exactly three thousand words away from finishing the manuscript that would save me from eviction when the heir to the New York underworld turned my laptop into a pile of useless plastic and glass.

The sound was sickening. It was a sharp, final crunch-like a bone snapping under the weight of a heavy boot.

I sat frozen in the corner booth of The Gilded Cage. This bistro was far too expensive for me. I was only here because the Wi-Fi in my apartment had been cut off two days ago, and I had been nursing a single lukewarm coffee for three hours just to leech off their connection.

Now, my coffee was spilled across the table, dripping onto the floor in a muddy stream. My laptop, my lifeline, lay on the ground in two distinct, shattered pieces.

The bistro had gone silent.

Seconds ago, the air had been filled with the polite clinking of silverware and low chatter. Now, the silence was heavy enough to choke on.

I looked up.

The man standing over my table didn't look sorry. He looked like a natural disaster confined within the sharp lines of a bespoke three-piece suit. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and radiated a kind of cold energy that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up.

He wasn't alone. Four other men stood behind him, forming a wall of muscle and grim faces. They scanned the room like they expected an ambush.

The man in the front-the one who had plowed through my table in his haste-didn't even look at the wreckage. He looked at his watch.

"Clear this," he said. His voice was deep, baritone, and utterly devoid of emotion.

One of the men behind him stepped forward. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thick clip of cash. He tossed it onto the wet table. It landed in a puddle of latte with a wet slap.

"That should cover it," the subordinate said.

They turned to leave. Just like that. As if they had stepped on a bug and were moving on to more important things.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. That laptop held three years of work. It held the only copy of my novel because I couldn't afford cloud storage and my external drive had corrupted last week. It was my rent money. It was my food. It was my life.

"Hey!" I shouted.

The word rang out like a gunshot in the silent room.

The man in the suit stopped. He didn't turn around immediately. The tension in the room spiked. A waiter near the kitchen dropped a tray, the crash echoing loudly.

I stood up, my legs shaking. I grabbed the soggy stack of hundred-dollar bills and marched up to his back.

I shoved the money toward him.

He turned slowly. His eyes were dark, almost black. They were dead eyes. The kind of eyes that had seen things that would make normal people scream.

"I don't want your payoff," I said, my voice trembling but loud. "You broke my property. You ruined my work. I don't want cash. I want an apology."

The entire restaurant seemed to hold its breath. One of his guards reached for his waistband, his hand hovering over a bulge that was definitely not a cell phone.

The man in the suit raised a hand, stopping the guard without looking at him. He looked down at me. He looked at my frayed sweater, my messy bun, the desperation etched into my face. He didn't look angry. He looked bored. And then, for a split second, he looked amused.

"An apology," he repeated. The word sounded foreign on his tongue.

"Yes," I said. "You were careless. You destroyed something that matters to me."

He took a step closer. The scent of him hit me-expensive cologne, tobacco, and something metallic, like copper. Like fresh blood.

I realized then that the red stain on his cuff wasn't wine.

Fear, icy and sharp, sliced down my spine. I knew who he was. Everyone in New York knew the rumors about the Vitiello family. This was Dante Vitiello. The Shark. The man who ran the city from the shadows.

I had just shouted at a man who dissolved people in acid as a pastime.

"Keep the money," he said softly. His voice was low, intimate, and terrifying. "Buy a better computer. And buy some common sense while you are at it."

He turned and walked out the door. His soldiers followed him, leaving me standing there with a fistful of wet cash and a broken life.

I looked down at the money. It was five thousand dollars. More than I had made in six months.

But as I looked at the door he had walked through, I didn't feel relief. I felt a strange, magnetic pull. I felt like I had just stared into the abyss, and the abyss had decided to stare back.