PROLOGUE: HE SHOT ME DEAD
The heavy, cloying scent of jasmine hung thick in the air.
Sweet. Suffocating.
But it did its job, completely burying the faint, chemical bitterness of the hex-toxin I’d slipped into Christian Vance’s bourbon.
Outside the manor, the Atlantic was throwing a violent tantrum, smashing itself ragged against the stone cliffs. Inside, the city’s undisputed tyrant lay sprawled across the silk sheets, dead to the world. His breathing was heavy, a low growl rattling deep in his chest. I parted his bespoke suit jacket, exposing the hard, clean planes of his chest beneath the crisp cotton.
My fingertips traced his jawline. He was warm. Infuriatingly warm.
Six months.
For six grueling months, I had lived like a ghost in his shadow. I knew his routines, his favorite underground clubs, his preferred cigar brands. I hadn’t slept a full, uninterrupted night in half a year.
Countless times, I’d watched him walk right past me—those broad shoulders, the tapered waist, the blade-sharp nose, and those cruel, devastating lips. God, the man was a masterpiece of lethal engineering. Even the way he coldly signed away a man’s life while slowly pulling on his leather gloves was sickeningly attractive. It made my blood run hot with a mix of hatred and hunger.
But he possessed the feral paranoia of a wolf. The slightest misstep, and I’d have been at the bottom of the ocean before morning.
Now, the apex predator was finally under my blade.
I leaned down, pressing my chest against his radiating body heat. Nothing was going to stop me from breaking this perfect man. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs as my fingers slid lower, stopping at the cold, black calfskin leather of his belt.
Just one click.
I inhaled his scent—wood, winter spice, and the sharp edge of the sedative—and pinched the buckle. I applied pressure.
Snap.
The metallic release echoed sharply in the dead silence of the room.
Before the leather strap could even clear the loops, a massive, heavy hand slammed down, pinning my wrist to his waist with bone-crushing force. The sheer impact threw me off balance, slamming me backward onto the mattress.
Christian Vance’s eyes snapped open.
They were crystal clear. Dead. Utterly devoid of warmth. I was looking directly into the eyes of my own executioner.
The toxin hadn’t worked.
Before I could scramble back, his hand dipped beneath the pillow. I lunged forward to pin his arm, but I was a split second too late. I had let his beauty blind me, and that fraction of a second cost me everything.
Bang.
A blinding flash of yellow fire tore through the dark. The roar didn’t just hit my ears—it hollowed out my mind, erasing every thought as the lead shattered through bone. No pain yet—just a concussive blow that felt like the atmosphere had been violently sucked from my lungs.
Blood sprayed across the stark white headboard, a jagged, wet ruin. My knees buckled instantly, and I hit the floorboards like lead.
So this is death.
Then, the howling wind outside died mid-breath.
The spraying droplets of blood froze in mid-air, suspended like deep-red glass beads between the bed and the floor. The gray smoke rising from his gun barrel condensed into a perfectly still, frozen spiral. Time had simply paused.
A shadow detached itself from the heavy velvet curtains by the balcony, bleeding through a sudden swell of gray mist.
Madame Celeste. The old witch whose life I’d bought in the slums years ago.
Her black robes swept soundlessly across the floor as she approached. On the bed, Christian sat rigid, his knuckles still white around the grip of the smoking gun. She didn’t even glance at him. Her gaze settled entirely on my twitching corpse.
“I warned you, Sophia,” her voice echoed directly inside my fading consciousness—low, dry, and vibrating with ancient weight. “His pride is a fortress. Your fixation bought you nothing but a bullet to the brain.”
I wanted to scream, but I was nothing more than a floating awareness trapped inside a bleeding corpse.
She stared at my soul, sighed, and raised her hand in a complex, forbidden gesture.
Clank.
A heavy, dual-toned chain of obsidian and liquid gold burst from the center of my shattered chest. It writhed like a living serpent, cutting through the static air, and slammed straight into Christian’s ribs. It pierced the flesh, coiling tight around his heart.
On the bed, Christian’s frozen torso gave a sudden, violent jolt. A silent, ragged gasp escaped his lips as the magic anchored itself.
“The lead destroyed your skull, but my blood-debt keeps your soul from unraveling,” Celeste said, her expression softening into something resembling pity. “However, you cannot wake up in reality. You must enter a cycle of five illusory realms. In those five worlds, you must strip away his defenses and force him to love you absolutely.”
She paused, her voice dripping with warning. “Yet beneath his clean slate, a primal hostility will linger. He won’t know why, but every atom of his being will want to destroy you.If you fail to make him submit, if you fail to make him love you completely, and if you fail to successfully sleep with him... the chain will shatter.”
‘And if I fail?’ My thoughts screamed into the void.
“Your heart will rot in this bed,” Celeste answered the desperate echo in my mind. “Both of you will become ghosts, trapped in an eternal loop of betrayal. Go now, Sophia. My remaining power will materialize as a guide—a system—to give you an edge when things go south.”
Without waiting for my consent, the witch flicked her wrist.
The chains snapped taut.
A massive gravity seized me, ripping my consciousness out of the gray room and plunging me backward into a swirling vortex of blinding white light.
Shards of my past tore through the empty space—surviving the meat-grinder of the streets, breaking into impenetrable vaults, playing the untouchable siren to ruin powerful men. I had built myself from nothing, and I had never met a mark who broke me like this.
But I don’t scare easily.
Conquer him across five worlds? Drag him to my bed five times?
A sharp, dark amusement flared in my mind. If anything, the stakes finally felt appropriate.
He thought a piece of copper and lead was enough to clean up his mess. He thought he was finally safe behind his fortress.
He was wrong. He hadn’t eliminated his executioner.
He had just locked himself inside the cage with his predator.
