I ended the call, returning my attention to the security feed. Julietta had stopped pacing. She stood at the window, her reflection ghostly in the glass. Even pixelated through the camera feed, I could see the strength in her posture. The defiance in the set of her shoulders.
Most people would break after what she'd endured. Most people would curl up in bed and weep.
Not her.
My chest expanded with something that felt dangerously like admiration.
I pulled up her file again. Julietta Altieri, age twenty-three. Adopted by the Bennetts at six months old. Raised in suburban Connecticut. Graduated magna cum laude from Yale with a degree in economics. Fluent in five languages. Hobbies included reading, classical music,and apparently staring out windows at night with the kind of hunger that suggested she was starving for something money couldn't buy.
Seven years of her life promised to a cartel prince. Seven years of obedience and submission. Seven years of slowly dying inside while she played the role her father wrote for her.
I'd watched her at seventeen different events over the past six months. Watched her dance with men twice her age, watched her laugh at jokes that clearly bored her. Watched her become smaller and smaller, folding herself into whatever shape the room required.
Lorenzo kept her separate from the business—she attended legitimate galas, charity functions, society events where his criminal empire could hide behind philanthropy. She was his princess, not his soldier. Clean. Untainted. A perfect gift-wrapped asset for the Suarez family.
She had no idea who I was. Probably couldn't pick me out of a lineup of Chicago's most wanted. Lorenzo made sure his daughter never learned the names of his enemies.
Smart strategy. Keep the merchandise pristine.
But it also meant she'd been watching me watch her for six months without ever knowing the danger she was in.
Then I'd pulled the trigger, and for just a moment—
She'd been alive.
At 10:47 a.m. the next day, Julietta's black Mercedes S-Class pulled through the intersection of Seventh and Aldrich.
Two cars of security flanked her—minimum protection, exactly as I'd anticipated. Lorenzo didn't want to make a show of moving her, to draw attention from rival families.
Didn't want anyone to know she was vulnerable.
My three SUVs converged with surgical precision. Masked men in tactical gear moved like liquid shadow, doors ripping open, hands reaching—
Julietta fought.
God, did she fight.
She came out of that car like a wildcat, kicking and clawing, her scream cutting through the morning air like a blade. The hood dropped over her head, and she went feral—thrashing, biting, nearly catching Vince on the jaw before they got her restrained.
I watched from the third vehicle, my hands gripping the armrest so hard the leather creased.
"Get her in the vehicle," I commanded.
They hauled her into my SUV, her body a coil of fury and terror, still screaming under the hood. I let her scream. Let her rage. It confirmed what I already knew—she had fire inside her, burning bright and hot beneath that carefully constructed exterior.
The door slammed. My driver accelerated. We merged into traffic, and Julietta Altieri disappeared from the city in the span of a heartbeat.
She thrashed against the men restraining her, her voice raw. "Let me go. Let me go. My father will—"
"Your father," I said, my voice cutting through her panic like a knife, "won't find you."
She went still. In the darkness under that hood, I could feel her attention snap toward me.
"Who are you? What do you—"
I reached out and removedthe hood.
Julietta's eyes were wild, her auburn hair tangled, her dress torn at the shoulder. She looked feral and exquisite and absolutely fucking reckless as she lunged toward me, her nails extended like claws.
