Chapter 1 - THE PRICE OF VENGEANCEThe silence in the private office stretched so tight it felt like a piano wire pulled to the breaking point. Two million dollars lay on the mahogany desk between us, rejected by a woman with ink stains on her fingers and three pencils stabbed haphazardly into her dark curls.
"It isn’t enough," Clara Higgins repeated, her eyes steady, unblinking, and entirely devoid of the terror every other soul in New York reserved for my name.
Nobody talked back to Dante Moretti. Not capos, not politicians, and certainly not costumers from Broadway. Yet here she sat, leaning across my desk, invading my space with a calculated audacity that sent a strange, unfamiliar jolt straight to my chest.
"You drive a hard bargain for a woman whose coat was dripping on my Italian marble twenty minutes ago," I said, my voice dropping an octave into that dangerous register that usually made grown men scramble for the door.
Clara didn’t even flinch. She leaned back, crossing her legs in that striking emerald dress she had somehow slipped into with supernatural speed. "Your marble will dry, Mr. Moretti. But my life? My life is currently being dismantled brick by brick by a man named Victor Vance—the very monster you’re inviting me to dine with tomorrow night."
The air left the room.
My right-hand man, Mateo, stiffened by the door, his hand instinctively twitching toward his shoulder holster. My eyes locked onto Clara’s. The pieces clicked into place with terrifying speed. Vance. The shipping tycoon with international ties to the Bratva and a ruthless streak that matched my own.
"Victor Vance," I murmured, tasting the name like poison. "He holds your debts. Or worse, your brother."
"My younger Leo," Clara said, her voice finally losing its icy composure, cracking just enough to reveal the raw nerve beneath. "Vance claims Leo lost half a million in his underground poker dens. He’s holding him. He gave me forty-eight hours to pay or watch Leo come home in pieces. I didn’t walk into your office by accident, Dante. I knew who you were. I knew you were looking for a fake wife to infiltrate Vance’s high-society charity gala tomorrow night. I need Vance destroyed, and you need a woman who won't blink when he looks at her. We have a deal, or I walk out that door right now and find another way to burn Vance’s empire to the ground."
I stared at her. The sheer, breathtaking madness of it. She wasn't just playing a part; she was declaring war using me as her weapon.
"If I wipe out Vance’s debts and hand you his head on a silver platter," I whispered, standing up slowly and towering over the desk, "what do I get besides a fake wife?"
Clara stood up with me, matching my height in her heels, her chin held high. "You get a woman who will save your life at that dinner, Moretti. Because if Vance figures out who I am before the main course, we both die."
"Deal," I said, extending my hand.
May you like
She slipped her small, ink-stained hand into mine. Her grip was firm, warm, and entirely fearless.
Tomorrow night, New York’s most dangerous underground syndicate was going to meet my new wife. And they had no idea what was coming for them.
