“I’m so tired of having my heart broken,” I said, the words catching in my throat. “I didn’t come to New York to be someone’s wife or disappear from my friends and family. I came to make my dreams happen.”
My emotions surged as his ultimatum sank in.
“I love to perform. Ineedto. I didn’t just roll out of bed one day and think,Hey, maybe I’ll get famous.No. I trained. I sacrificed. I worked as hard as anyone else and waited my turn, time and time again in those damn audition lines.”
I looked him dead in the eye. “So, fuck you and your arrogance if you think I’m just some wide-eyed girl chasing fairy tales. I earned this.”
He narrowed his eyes at me but didn’t interrupt.
“And marriage?” I huffed. “I’m twenty. I’m not ready. I have so much more I want to do. And if there’s one thing you need to understand about me, Nik, it’s that I won’t let anyone control me.”
I fiddled with the latch on my purse. Surely, there had to be another option.
“I’ve always followed my gut. My instincts. My choices are made by me and me alone. So yeah, you might be the hottest man walking, but that doesn’t mean I want tobelongto you.”
There was a long silence. Then Nik leaned back slowly, keeping his focus on me. The heat in his stare was unbearable.
“You’re either mine,” he said evenly, “or you go to Tacoma.”
My stomach turned.
“And let me warn you; if you think you can escape Tacoma, come back here, or go home to Tennessee, you won’t survive a day. If you think I’m a monster—fine. But you have no idea what Delgado is, what he does to women…innocent women.”
His lip curled, his jaw tight with disgust.
“Yes,” he said, leaning closer until he was inches away from my face, “I was born and raised as a weapon. A bratva heir. Yes, I will train you to be my wife, my partner, and my lover. But maybe that’s better than being some cartel animal’s plaything—or dead in a shipping container halfway to nowhere.”
I swallowed hard.
“The only way I can keep you safe is to make you mine or hide you so deeply no one will ever know Lacey Grace Oakley existed.”
He let that hang in the air between us.
“No more fighting me,” he said.
His voice dropped to a near-whisper.
“Your choice, Lacey. Now decide.”
Outside, the Hudson shimmered under the moonlight. And here I sat, caged like some animal. I had no good options. Yes, he was offering me a clean slate with a new name and a safe life.
But I’d never been the kind of girl who ran toward easy.
And I’d die of boredom in a month.
Nik remained motionless, watching me. His face was unreadable, but the tension in his shoulders told me this moment mattered more than he’d admit.
The significance of what he was offering was clear: a one-way exit from everything I’d known…or a plunge straight into the deep end of a life most women couldn’t survive.
A marriage to Nik would be far from easy.
It would be brutal and complicated.
Heaven help me though…it would be thrilling, taboo even—just like watching Sage Lockwood in the shower all those years ago.
Despite how much his violent and dominating ways scared me, I also knew he could offer me something no safe life ever could.
Nik would ruin me for any other man—and I would enjoy every second of it.
