Prologue One-Cecilia
Being a Batiste means two things—loyalty and power.
Everything else is optional.
My father built Viper Enterprises along with my uncles, Nico and Angel Fury, from a mix of grief, rage, brilliance, brutality, and blood.
As for me? I followed in his footsteps.
Princeton Law.
Top of my class.
Bar exam aced.
Now I spend my days buried in contracts thick enough to crush a man’s spirit, making sure every shady, brilliant deal our family touches stays just this side of legal.
It’s not a bad life. It’s just tight.
Predictable. Caged.
So, I take my freedom where I can find it.
In my hair—wild corkscrew curls that refuse to obey, cut short to my neck in the back, then to my shoulders in the front—like some punk rock dare.
In my ink—coiling tattoos that trace my skin, a Viper curling around my hipbone, smaller pieces along my wrists, spine, and yes, I even have a blue fairy inked right on my left ass cheek.
In the piercings—four in each ear, a glint of gold in my nose, and two secret bars through my nipples, and more in other places—all of it serves to remind me every day that my body, at least, is mine.
Most men can’t handle that.
They want the polished daughter of a crime-king-turned-CEO, not the woman underneath—the one who burns for more.
Then Atlas James walks into our boardroom.
Atlas.
James.
Just his name sounds like a warning label.
And believe me, he lives up to it.
He’s rich—obscenely, tastelessly, old-money rich.
He’s very well-educated.
He has a reputation that makes CEOs straighten their ties and sign NDAs before he even opens his mouth.
And he’s supposedly tough as nails, though personally? I suspect the nails would lose.
No trace of an accent despite the rumors about his Greek upbringing.
But then again, princes are trained to blend in when it suits them.
Yes, princes.
Because just recently, in the kind of late-night rabbit hole only too much espresso can produce, I found out his real name isn’t James.
