THEN
Prologue
Peoplejudgedothersbywhat they saw. I learned that quick and hard. I was once a girl people were eager to please, with nice clothes, no dangling threads to be pulled, soft-brushed pigtails, and a beaming smile that spoke of a happy, safe, respectable homelife.
You see, wealth is in everything. It shows in your attitude, your clothing, and your well-being. I had that. My parents were well off. Both were doctors, and my brother was studying to follow in their footsteps. I wanted to as well. I was forever proud to stand up on the first day of each elementary school year and tell my classmates and teachers about my cardiothoracic surgeon mother, my pediatric surgeon father, and then my valedictorian brother accepted into Harvard Medical.
Life was good, and back then, I didn’t have a care in the world.
Then the accident happened. You never think it’s going to be the last time you see a loved one until they are gone. I was ten when my parents’ car was T-boned in a hit-and-run on their way home from date night. My brother, Noah, became my guardian after that. I was eleven when the stock market crashed and knocked our parents’ savings down by more than half.
I didn’t get it back then. All I knew was that Noah decided we couldn’t afford the tuition of his last two years at the subpar medical school he transferred to after their deaths, pay the high upkeep on our parents’ home, and keep me enrolled at my private school if he wanted to promise me any kind of future. He had student loan debt—another concept I didn’t grasp.
If I had known then what I know now, I would have fought harder for him to finish his degree. I would have pushed for us to live in the smallest dump in the world if it meant we were safe and happy together, but I was ignorant, grieving, and downright selfish. I wanted the house I grew up in and the life my parents had promised me.
When I was fourteen, Noah was gunned down while working to give me the future I thought I wanted. From that day on, whatever veil of innocence that used to shroud me disintegrated into ash.
Being an orphan became more than just a part of who I was. It became how people defined me. I was no longer my father’s daughter, or my brother’s sister, the girl with a promising future. I wasn’t the vibrant, polished child my ambitious mother had inspired me to be.
Now, I was just another statistic, nothing more. From then on, I was judged not on merit but because I was part of the system. No one wanted to know more about me once they learned that little fact, and they certainly no longer expected much of me either. No one excepthimcared at all. Renzo Iannelli might have been the monster in the dark that my parents always warned me about, but he was also the nightmare that let me thrive.
Within days of Noah’s death, I stopped dreaming of following in my parents’ footsteps. It was so easy for others to tear my spirit down, especially when it was hanging on by only a thread. It wasn’t as if I could afford much of anything anymore, had anyone to make proud, or had a reason to look to the futureamong all the regular teenage angst. I was angry—at the world, at myself. I wanted revenge. I needed someone tangible to blame.
It was so easy to do withhimbefore I even knew him at all.
Chapter 1
Ainsley – fourteen / Renzo – twenty-seven
ThefirsttimeImet Renzo Iannelli was the day Noah died.
I hadn’t known Noah was dead at the time. All I knew was that my brother was missing. He didn’t come home, didn’t go to his second job of the day, and didn’t answer his phone or check in on social media.
Renzo Iannelli—though I didn’t know it was him—approached me, slouched as I was against a corridor wall at the busy police station with my arms wrapped tight around my growling stomach.
“Are you lost,piccola?”
Such a simple question. Almost kind, delivered in a bass, nearly apathetic voice that seemed to mute the surrounding conversations and the nonstop ringing phones. It was so rich and deep that it reminded me of creamy chocolate on a hot day. Dreamy, but the man himself…he made my teenage brain fire in all directions. I didn’t even realize guys like that existed outside of movies.
He had to be in his mid-twenties, towering over me by a good head and a half, every inch of his face defined andstrong. His jaw was all hard angles with prominent cheekbones. Thick eyebrows framed cold emerald eyes, gleaming with different shades of green. Man, I wished mine were that color instead of wet dirt.
His suit looked crisper and finer than the ones my dad used to wear, giving him that over-the-top refined image, broken only by the tattoos covering his hands, from his knuckles to the tips of his sleeves. A few also crawled up his neck over his dress shirt collar. A gaudy gold ring decorated one of his hands, with diamonds encrusted around the band, and a large but delicate pendant hung from a thick gold chain around his neck. Whoever this guy was, his look practically screamed, “Wealthy and perilous, pay attention.”
“You shouldn’t wander off in a place like this.” He spoke without even glancing at me.
I eyed both ends of the corridor. Neither wait line had moved up. “Doesn’t look so dangerous.”
“Danger always lurks where you least expect it.”
As if to emphasize the dangers of starvation, my stomach picked that moment to growl as comically loud as a cartoon character’s burp. I squeezed my stomach, my face flaming, eyes wide and glued to the grout lines between the tile at my feet.
“Eat.” My good-looking stranger held out a sandwich in front of me.
Steak, cheese, cooked onions, peppers—the smells made my mouth water. Plus, I recognized the logo on the wrapper. I loved that Italian deli place. Mom and Dad used to take me there every Friday after school. Noah and I kept up the tradition but only once a month. I licked my lips, hesitating. Taking food from a random stranger always seemed like the start of a really bad kidnapping story. But…we were in a police station. It’s not like he could do much of anything to me here, with all these cops, right?
“Why?”
“If you starve, it’ll be your choice, not mine.”
