Page 18 of Claimed Through Deception

"Would you?" I challenge, leaning closer. "You think you are tough because you survived a drunk father and a rough neighborhood? Prison will break you in a week. You will be locked in a cage surrounded by real demons, and nobody will be coming to save you."

I tap my index finger against the heavy parchment.

"Or, you sign the paper. You spend a year dusting my books and pouring my drinks in a mansion. You are fed, you are clothed, and nobody ever lays a hand on you." I pause for the hook. "At the end of the year, your debt is paid. You walk away."

It is a lie. She will never walk away. She will die wearing my name. But she doesn't need to know that yet. I need this one year to make her want me. I will offer her a job and protection, but she will find her wat into my bed.

Livia stares at the contract. Her chest rises and falls in rapid, panicked breaths. She is running the calculus in her head, searching frantically for a third option, a loophole, an escape hatch.

There isn't one. I meticulously sealed every exit.

She looks at her wrists, red and bruised by the heavy steel cuffs. She looks at the cold concrete walls of the interrogation room. And finally, she looks at me.

She hates me. I can feel the venom radiating off her small frame. But beneath the hatred, the survival instinct is stronger. She wants to live. She wants the bakery. She thinks she can endure twelve months of my presence if it means getting her life back.

"If I sign it," she whispers, her voice completely hoarse. "You swear I won't go to prison?"

"I swear it on my life."

She squeezes her eyes shut. A ragged, defeated sigh tears its way out of her throat.

She reaches out with trembling, handcuffed hands. Her fingers curl clumsily around the heavy gold pen. She drags the contract toward her.

She doesn't read the fine print. She doesn't need to. She just presses the tip of the pen against the thick parchment and signs her name in jagged, shaking script.

Livia Marino.

The ink dries. The trap snaps completely shut.

I reach out, sliding the paper and the pen out from under her fingers. I fold the contract precisely in half and tuck it back into the breast pocket of my suit jacket, right over my heart.

I pull a small, silver key from my pocket. I reach across the table, grab the chain connecting her cuffs, and unlock the heavy steel bands. They fall away from her bruised wrists with a loud clatter.

Livia immediately pulls her arms to her chest, rubbing the raw skin, her eyes glued to the floor.

I step back, adjusting the lapels of my jacket. The possessive triumph roars back to life in my veins.

"Get up, Livia," I command softly. "We are going home."

7

Livia

The leather seat of the Maybach is cold against my bare thighs.

I stare blankly out the tinted window. The city lights blur into long, meaningless streaks of yellow and red against the pitch-black sky. We’ve made a brief stop at my apartment to collect some things that I needed.

I had to practically beg because I wanted the last thing I had of my mother.

It’s an old framed photo of her and me. Now we are crossing the bridge over the Charles River, leaving the gritty, suffocating streets of the South Side behind. We are heading into the sprawling, untouchable wealth of the Boston elite.

I am leaving my entire life behind.

It feels like I am attending my own funeral. The ghost of the girl I was a few hours ago is dead. She was slaughtered by a dirty cop and a signature on a piece of legal parchment.

Now, there is only this. The suffocating silence of the luxury car. The faint, intoxicating smell of bergamot and gunpowder radiating from the massive man sitting too close to me.

Niccolò hasn't spoken a word since he put me in the car. He sits with his long legs spread, his elbow resting on the center console, taking up all the oxygen in the space. He is a black hole, and I am already caught past the event horizon.