PROLOGUE
POV: THAYERSix years ago.
The copper stench of blood is impossible to wash out of Italian wool.
I stare down at my bruised knuckles, flexing my fingers slowly to make sure nothing is broken. The man groaning on the Persian rug at my feet spits a mouthful of crimson onto the intricate silk fibers. It’s a shame. The rug is an antique. The man bleeding on it is just a liability.
"I need more time, Thorne," Arthur Vance chokes out, clutching his shattered ribs. "I swear to God, the shipment was intercepted. I just need another month."
I don't look at him. I pull a stark white monogrammed handkerchief from my inner pocket and methodically wipe a stray drop of blood from my silver watch face.
"Time is a commodity you no longer possess, Arthur," I say. My voice doesn't rise above a low, flat murmur, but the temperature in his lavish study seems to drop ten degrees. "You owe the Syndicate four million dollars. You have until midnight to empty your vaults, or I will take the payment in pieces. Starting with your fingers."
I turn on my heel to leave, suffocated by the smell of his pathetic desperation. I am twenty-two, freshly crowned as myfather's enforcer, and already entirely hollow inside. This world is a mechanical rotation of violence, greed, and men begging for their miserable lives. None of it moves me. My pulse rests at a cool, even sixty beats per minute, undisturbed by the carnage.
Until I open the heavy oak doors of his office and step out into the dimly lit hallway.
I stop dead in my tracks.
Standing at the top of the grand marble staircase is a ghost.
She is small. Fragile. A girl hovering on the precipice of adolescence, maybe twelve or thirteen. She wears an oversized, pale blue nightgown that swallows her thin frame, her bare feet pressing into the cold stone floor. Her dark hair cascades down her back in wild, tangled waves, framing a face made of porcelain and sharp, aristocratic angles.
But it’s her eyes that steal the oxygen straight from my lungs.
They are massive, fractured pools of midnight blue. She stares at the blood splattered across my white dress shirt. She stares at my bruised, violent hands. She hears the muffled, agonizing groans of her father bleeding out inside his office.
Any normal child would scream. Any normal child would run for the heavy front doors and cry for the police.
She doesn’t.
She just watches me. Her small hands curl tightly into the fabric of her nightgown, her knuckles turning bone-white. Her chest rises and falls in rapid, shallow staccatos, mimicking the frantic heartbeat of a trapped bird. She is absolutely terrified of me. Every instinct she has is screaming that I am the predator in her home.
And yet, she doesn't break eye contact.
A heavy, jagged silence crashes over the hallway. The world outside these walls ceases to exist. There is only the ticking of the grandfather clock and the magnetic, gravitational pull locking me to the top of those stairs.
A dark, visceral current rips through my chest, violent and entirely foreign. The hollowness inside me fractures. Something ancient, feral, and deeply possessive claws its way up my throat, tasting like ash and adrenaline.
Mine.The thought doesn't form rationally. It slams into my bones like a physical blow.
Arthur Vance stumbles out of the office behind me, clutching his side. He sees where my focus is locked. He sees the monster staring at his daughter.
"Sybil," Arthur barks, panic lacing his voice for the first time tonight. "Go back to your room. Now."
She flinches at her father's harsh tone, a minute tremor violently shaking her small shoulders. Her gaze finally snaps away from mine, dropping to the floor in immediate, trained submission. She turns and disappears down the dark corridor, swallowed by the shadows of the estate.
The air in my lungs suddenly feels too thin.
I turn back to Arthur. He is sweating profusely now, pressing a hand against the doorframe to keep himself upright. He recognizes the shift in my posture. He recognizes the lethal stillness settling over my shoulders.
"Four million dollars," I repeat, my voice a quiet, dangerous rasp that scrapes against the marble walls. I step closer to him,invading his space until he is forced to press his back against the wood. "Or..."
I let the silence hang, heavy with the weight of a newly forged obsession.
"Or what, Thayer?" he whispers, his face draining of color.
I look up the empty staircase, tracking the exact spot where her bare feet stood. My blood roars in my ears, thick and demanding.
