Chapter 1

The air in the makeshift truce tent was thick, smelling of stale beer and fear.

Isabelle "Izzy" Beaumont stood before Jackson "Jax" Moreau.

His Gators, leather-clad and heavily armed, flanked him.

New Orleans was a powder keg, rival gangs ready to tear it apart, the old guard, her family, losing grip.

Izzy offered the only thing she had left to stop the blood, herself.

"A union," she said, her voice surprisingly steady, "to bring peace."

Jax, leader of the Gators, a man she knew from a childhood that felt a lifetime ago, a boy from the bayou's edge, just looked at her.

His eyes, once holding a wild spark she'd found captivating, were now cold, hard.

He leaned back in his chair, a king on a stolen throne.

"Peace?" He chuckled, a low, dangerous sound. "You think you can buy peace, little Beaumont?"

"I'm offering a way to end this," Izzy said.

He stood, walked around her, inspecting her like a prize animal.

"Alright, Izzy. A union it is."

His smile didn't reach his eyes.

The "union" was a brutal charade.

Their "marital" home was a commandeered plantation, its grandeur mocking her.

The nights were filled with his dominance, a cold assertion of power.

Izzy clung to a foolish hope, that somewhere beneath the monster, the Jax she remembered flickered.

She was wrong.

Soon, Jax unleashed his Gators fully.

New Orleans burned.

He made her watch.

Her father, Mayor Beaumont, proud and defiant to the end, mauled by Jax's attack dogs in the city square.

Her brother, Beau, handsome and brave, gunned down, his body crushed under the Gators' motorcycles.

Her mother, "Momma," stripped, paraded through the jeering crowds, collapsing in shame, dying days later from the trauma.

Jax stood beside Izzy through it all, his face a mask of triumph.

He leaned close, his breath hot on her ear.

"Did you really think your sacrifice," he sneered, "your precious body, could win my heart, Izzy?"

He gestured to the carnage.

"Did you think it could erase the sins of your family against my people?"

His voice was venom.

"This is just the beginning of your payment."