Prologue
Wintervale wasn’t built for love.
It was engineered, brick by brick, for leverage. Powdered with snow to look innocent, wrapped in tradition so tight you’d call it virtue, and stitched together with secrets no one says out loud. You learn to smile here while you count knives.
Tonight, every blade in town shines at the Frostbourne Estate.
Oldest house on the hill. Glass blazing like a cathedral. Their first event of the season, the annual Evergreen Ball, turns the ballroom into a hunting ground where politicians, CEOs, and freshly scrubbed “new money” circle in tuxedos and couture, pretending they’re not fucking predators.
Champagne fizzes in their glasses. Lies float in the air. The orchestra plays some sort of mindless classic, so no one has to hear themselves think.
I’m a shadow against the paneled wall, vape low between my fingers, back where I swore I’d never stand again.
I walked away from the Delano name once. Walked away from the handshakes that come with handcuffs. But blood has a long reach, and my uncle knows exactly which vein to tap when he wants my obedience.
“Wintervale needs you for a job, Blake.”
Translation: I want you for a job. A girl. A favor. An order.
Protect the senator’s daughter.
Don’t ask questions.
Don’t get involved.
Clean. Simple. Silent.
Except nothing in Wintervale stays clean, and I’ve never been good at being silent.
I take another hit of the vape and let the smoke carve space between me and the buzz of money talking. Across the room, a Kingsley smiles too widely. A Thorne whispers too low. The Evermoores float around the place like they own the oxygen we breathe. The Lennox heir tries to charm the room like he’s rehearsed it for weeks. Same players. New stakes.
Then I see her.
Crimson silk. Confident stride. A face that doesn’t beg for attention so much as dares you to look away. She doesn’t scan the room; she grades it. The tilt of her chin says she knows the rules and doesn’t give a fuck about any of them. The mouth says she’ll enjoy the argument.
And probably can suck a really good dick.
Yeah, trouble has a distinct shape in this room, and tonight, it’s hers.
I don’t say the word that curls behind my teeth. I file it. Catalog the details the way I’m trained to—entry points, exits, converging lines of sight. The small tells no one in this room is practiced enough to notice. The way two men in black suits pause when she pivots. I scoff at how bad they are at this. The senator’s staff watches too hard and too obviously. They’re worried.
They should be.
With a woman like that to protect, they don’t realize they’re standing in a fireworks factory until someone flicks a match.
She glides past the Thorne heir and drops him with a glance sharp enough to bleed. Sidesteps a Lennox with a bored smile. If posture could talk, hers is saying, I don’t need protection because I’m the baddest bitch in the room.
Which, in my experience, means she needs it more than any fucking body.
My pulse stays steady. My focus doesn’t. Because I know the assignment: observe, assess, intervene only if necessary—although necessary is a flexible word in this town.
My uncle called it a favor to an old ally. I call it a leash with a polished buckle. He wants me to do a job with my hands tied behind my back. I wish I had the power to say “fuck no” to your job, your order. But I can’t. Of all the people Silas could have sent me to protect…it’s Lila’s daughter.
Fuck me.
She doesn’t see me. Not yet. I prefer it that way. I track her reflection in the window first, safer to learn a person in reverse. Her eyes are the wrong kind for Wintervale: awake. Unimpressed. Not even the chandelier can blind her. There’s grit under that professional makeup job and that silk dress. A history, maybe. A plan, definitely.
I’m pretty sure that whoever thought they could use her as a pawn made their first mistake.
