CHAPTER 1
DARIUS
Her song wasn’t meant for me.
It was rare for me to leave the cold comfort of London. The solitude.
No one—and I mean no one— liked when I did. I made sure of it.
If you saw my face, it meant that shit had gone sideways and there would be consequences.
Painful ones.
When I was forced to travel, all I heard in my wake were screams and pleading.
Never had I heard a voice that made me forget my purpose.
This couldn’t be my target, the spoiled daughter of a dirty politician.
I inhaled slowly and counted to ten to control the rage clawing up my spine. There were few things I despised more than incompetence.
The file painted her as a mess: kicked out of boarding schools, a college dropout, a disappointment.
The perfect target for my plan.
The type of plan the other men in my family didn’t have the stones for—not with their new wives influencing theirdecisions. The type of plan that required cold-hearted focus and a willingness to apply violent coercion to a target.
Even if that target was female.
Especially if that female represented a vulnerability to her powerful mother. A weak point. A pressure point.
But that wasn’t who I observed.
She sat in the back of the shop, head bent over a guitar, fingers moving like she was afraid to stop. The song was quiet and broken. The kind that forced you to listen.
Her mother, an ambitious yet corrupt senator, had defied the Ivanovs, and for that her daughter would pay the price. It was simply how the world worked.
Life was just a series of math equations. Pluses and minuses. People were no longer human beings to me, just numbers on a spreadsheet.
So as not to alert her to our presence, I quietly signaled to my men to guard the exits.
Soft lilac waves framed a heart-shaped face, while full pink lips seemed to kiss each word of the bittersweet song. In an unaccustomed burst of irrationality, it angered me that her eyes were closed. As if she were intentionally depriving me of the pleasure of seeing them.
It was an out of character impulse.
Sentimentality wasn’t my style.
My business with her would be ugly and brutal. The kind that left scars. There was no way around it. Her mother had crossed a line, and I couldn’t let that stand, not without sending a clear message. No one fucks with the Ivanovs.
Senator Collins’s arrogance deceived her into assuming she was untouchable. She’d conveniently forgotten whose power built her empire. I came to deliver a familial reminder.
Using her daughter as leverage should ensure the senator understood the deadly stakes before a crucial Senate voteimpacting a pending lucrative defense contract worth billions to my family. Hopefully before I’d be forced to hurt the delicate creature in front of me…too much.
As she sang, she tilted her head back. A single tear glittered on the curve of her cheek.
My hand flexed, resisting the urge to touch her. One motion and the spell would break; my men at the door would move. I let her have just one more verse. One more moment of innocence.
Then she opened her eyes. They were the color of the sky before a blizzard, light reflecting off the dark.
