CHAPTER ONE
A Heart in Ruins
The palace had survived wars, betrayals, assassinations, and generations of blood-stained power, but that morning, it trembled under the rage of one broken man.
Prince Maxwell Greenwood stood in the middle of his private chamber, shirt unbuttoned, hair uncombed, eyes red from sleepless nights and too much smoke. The room smelled of whisky, cigarettes, and grief. Heavy curtains blocked the sunlight, leaving the space drowned in shadows, just the way he preferred it now.
Light reminded him of her.
Angel.
Even her name was a wound.
For two years, Maxwell had searched for his wife like a madman. He had emptied cities, threatened ministers, bribed officers, tortured enemies, and turned every stone his power could reach. He had sent men across borders, into villages, hospitals, ports, churches, refugee camps, and graves.
Still, there was nothing.
No body.
No letter.
No farewell.
Just silence.
The kind of silence Angel had lived in all her life.
The thought made his chest tighten so sharply that he pressed a hand against it, as if he could physically hold himself together. His eyes moved to the framed photograph on the table beside his bed. It was the only thing in the room he had not destroyed.
Angel was smiling in the picture.
Soft. Beautiful. Innocent.
His wife.
The woman his family had called unsuitable. The woman his kingdom had whispered about. The woman his mother had looked at as if she were a stain on royal blood.
And now she was gone.
A knock came at the door.
Maxwell did not move.
Another knock followed, this one hesitant.
His jaw tightened. “Leave.”
The door opened anyway.
Only one person in the entire kingdom was foolish enough to enter his room after being told to leave.
Mark.
Maxwell’s guard stepped inside carefully, his head lowered, his body stiff with fear. He knew better than to look directly at the prince when he was in such a state. Men had lost teeth for less.
“My prince…”
Maxwell slowly turned his head.
Mark swallowed.
“If you came here to tell me to eat, sleep, breathe, or forgive my family, I will break your jaw before you finish your sentence.”
Mark’s face paled. “No, Your Highness.”
The room fell silent again.
Maxwell’s fingers curled around the glass in his hand. “Then speak.”
Mark lifted his eyes, and for the first time in many months, there was something in them that was not pity.
It was fear.
And hope.
“My prince…” he said, voice trembling. “We found her.”
The glass slipped from Maxwell’s hand.
It hit the floor and shattered.
For a moment, the prince did not breathe. His entire body froze as if the words had struck him harder than any weapon ever could.
“What did you say?”
Mark lowered his head again. “We found Angel.”
Maxwell stared at him.
The name moved through the room like a ghost. Like a prayer. Like a curse.
Angel.
For two years, everyone had told him to forget her. His mother had said she must have left willingly. His sister had called her ungrateful. His father had advised him to accept fate. Martin had begged him to move on before grief buried him alive.
But Maxwell had known.
Deep in his bones, he had known Angel would never leave him without a word.
Not after the way she used to look at him.
Not after the way her small hands had learned every corner of his face.
Not after the nights she had rested against his chest, trusting him like he was the safest place in the world.
His voice came out dangerously low.
“Where?”
Mark hesitated.
That hesitation was enough to darken Maxwell’s eyes.
“I asked you where my wife is.”
“She was seen in a town near the eastern border,” Mark said quickly. “One of our men recognized her from the pictures. She was not alone.”
Maxwell’s breath stopped again.
Not alone.
The words twisted inside him.
“With whom?”
Mark looked like he would rather be shot than answer.
“With a child, Your Highness.”
The whole world stopped.
Maxwell took one step forward.
Mark took one step back.
“A child?” Maxwell repeated.
“Yes, my prince.”
“How old?”
“About two years old.”
Something brutal and painful moved across Maxwell’s face.
Two years.
Angel had disappeared two years ago.
His hand shook as he reached for the edge of the table, gripping it so hard his knuckles turned white. For a man feared by criminals, kings, and businessmen alike, he suddenly looked like he had been stabbed in a place no one could see.
A child.
Angel had a child.
His child?
The thought nearly brought him to his knees.
But Maxwell Greenwood did not fall.
He burned.
His eyes lifted to Mark, and the broken man vanished. In his place stood the prince the underground world feared. The man who did not forgive. The man who did not lose what belonged to him.
“Prepare the cars,” he ordered.
Mark bowed immediately. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“And Mark…”
The guard paused at the door.
Maxwell’s voice dropped into something cold enough to kill.
“If anyone tries to move her before I get there, bury them where they stand.”
Mark did not question him.
He only bowed lower and left.
Maxwell remained in the room for a moment longer, staring at Angel’s photograph. His chest was rising and falling heavily now, his heart beating with a violence he had not felt in years.
She was alive.
Angel was alive.
But if she had been alive all this time…
Why had she never come back?
His eyes darkened.
Had she run from him?
Had someone kept her away?
Or had his own family destroyed the only good thing he had ever touched?
Maxwell picked up the photograph and ran his thumb over Angel’s smiling face.
“I found you,” he whispered. “This time, even God will not take you from me.”
But before Angel became the woman who ruined him, she had been a stranger.
A beautiful girl under a foreign sky.
A girl who could not hear his voice.
A girl who should have been left alone.
A girl Maxwell Greenwood had wanted from the first moment he saw her.
And that was where the gamble began.
