Lark
Lark Santos had stopped counting how many locks were between her and freedom. There were the obvious ones—the steel gate around the compound, the armed guards at every entrance, the cameras mounted in every hallway like silent vultures watching her every move. Then there were the invisible locks. Her father’s rules, his threats, and the constant reminder that her life wasn’t her own.
She sat at the vanity in her room and stared at her reflection, hating how expensive misery looked on her. Diamond earrings glittered against her dark hair. A silk dress clung to her body like liquid gold. Her makeup was flawless because one of the house staff had spent an hour making sure of it. She was the pretty little princess of the Santos syndicate. Hell, she was property dressed up as royalty.
The sound of heavy footsteps outside her door made her stomach twist. She didn’t even need to look to know who it was—Dante. He came by every night, like clockwork. The lock clicked open, and her body stiffened instantly. He filled the doorway in a black suit that looked painted onto his broad shoulders. His cold eyes always gave too much away when he looked at her—even when he tried to hide it. Especially when he tried to hide it.
“You missed dinner,” he said.
Lark turned back toward the mirror. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“That’s the second meal you missed today,” he said.
“Maybe I’m dying,” she teased. It might just be easier for her if she had, but her luck wasn’t that good. His jaw ticked, which meant that she was getting to him. She liked it when she got under his skin. It reminded her that she still had some kind of power left.
“You need to eat,” he muttered. “And you need to stop acting like you don’t want to live,” he insisted. Silence filled the room after that. Lark hated silence because it always made her think too much about the men who used to flirt with her at parties until they realized whose daughter she was. And about the boy she kissed when she was sixteen, who disappeared three days later. Even the whispered conversations she wasn’t supposed to hear. She was being saved for something bigger. Her father’s voice still echoed in her nightmares sometimes.
“No man touches what belongs to me,” he growled. The sick part was that she didn’t think he meant marriage.
“You should’ve eaten,” Dante said again quietly.
Lark laughed bitterly and stood from the vanity. “You know what’s funny? You always sound guilty when you talk to me.” His eyes snapped to her, and she knew that she had hit a nerve. “Ahh, there’s that look,” she whispered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.
“Bullshit,” she grumbled. She crossed the room slowly, stopping inches from him. Dante immediately went rigid like touching her would kill him. Maybe it would.
“You look at me like you hate this job,” she said softly. “So why do you do it?”
His expression hardened instantly. A mask sliding back into place. “Because it’s my job.” Lark rolled her eyes and stepped away before she did something stupid, like grab him or kiss him.Or even worse, ask him to save her. Men like Dante didn’t save women like her—they guarded them or buried them, depending on orders from her father.
Still, she couldn’t stop herself from watching him sometimes. Lark couldn’t stop noticing the exhaustion in his face or the bruises on his knuckles. And she couldn’t stop wondering what kind of man willingly chained himself to her father, or what kind of man looked at her like she was both temptation and tragedy.
“I’m not staying here forever,” she said suddenly.
Dante’s posture tightened. “You don’t have a choice.”
“I always have a choice,” she insisted.
“Not according to your father,” he said.
The anger inside her exploded so fast it nearly choked her. “You think I don’t know that?” she snapped. “You think I don’t know exactly what he is?” Dante didn’t answer because they both knew. Hell, everyone in this house knew that her father wasn’t just dangerous; he was evil.
Lark shoved past Dante toward the balcony doors and yanked them open. Cold Chicago air swept into the room instantly, carrying distant city sounds from beyond the compound walls. Freedom was right there—so damn close. She gripped the railing tightly and looked down at the massive estate below. Guards patrolled the grounds with assault rifles like soldiers protecting a dictator. It was a prison disguised as a mansion.
Behind her, Dante quietly shut and locked the bedroom door. The sound nearly broke something inside her. “You know what I think?” she whispered without turning around.
“No,” he breathed.
“I think you’re just as trapped as I am,” she said. The silence behind her said everything. For one dangerous second, Lark imagined what it would feel like if the two of them stopped pretending. If Dante admitted he hated this place, and if sheadmitted she noticed the way his hands shook whenever he locked her door. Or if they both admitted the tension between them wasn’t hate at all. But fantasy was useless in this house. Fantasy got people killed.
“You should get some sleep,” Dante said finally.
Lark smiled sadly at the city lights beyond the gates. “I’ll sleep when I’m free.”
Lark woke to raised voices downstairs, and that alone was enough to make her sit upright in bed. The Santos compound was many things—violent, corrupt, suffocating—but it was never loud unless something had gone wrong. Men like her father valued control above all else, and yelling meant somebody had lost it. Or somebody was about to die.
She slipped from the bed and crossed the room barefoot, pressing herself against the crack of the bedroom door. The hallway outside was empty, but the voices downstairs carried through the marble halls of the mansion.
