Prologue
🔥 PROLOGUE — Blade
(Four Years Ago)
Rich houses lie.
They try to disguise rot with marble floors, polished banisters, and portraits of families pretending they don’t hate each other behind their veneers.
But fear?
Fear is honest.
Fear stinks.
And tonight, Charles Ashcroft is drowning in it before I’ve even crossed the threshold.
He answers the door and the colour vacates his face like it’s fleeing the scene.
“B—Blade.”
That’s not my name.
That’s a warning his brain is trying to give his body.
I step inside without waiting for permission. A man like him doesn’t own anything in this house anymore. Not even the air he’s choking on.
“I thought the club would send someone else,” he croaks.
“They did.”
I shut the door behind me.
“I’m who they send when they want it done right.”
He flinches at my tone. Good.
Fear sharpens obedience.
He babbles something about forty thousand, a missing shipment, who the money belongs to—
As if I haven’t already memorised every detail of his downfall.
He scurries off to fetch the cash, shoes slipping on the polished floor.
I don’t follow.
Rats run faster when the cat isn’t chasing.
I take in the décor — expensive, tasteful, utterly wasted on a man this pathetic.
If his envelope’s short, I’ll start with the art. Or the dog, if he has one. People scream louder when you’re creative.
Then I hear it.
Soft, bare footsteps on stairs.
Not fearful.
Not cautious.
Just alive — and walking straight into the jaws without realising.
She steps into view.
Cleo Ashcroft.
Silk nightdress that clings like it wants to confess her secrets for her.
Ivory fabric thin enough to be a sin in itself.
Light hits her, outlines her body in a way that makes me instinctively calculate:
how easy she’d be to lift, how quickly she’d fold, how prettily she’d break.
She isn’t a beacon.
She’s a problem.
She freezes when she sees me — not in fear, not yet — but like her brain has just sounded the first alarm and hasn’t decided whether to run or scream.
Her father appears behind me, voice cracking in terror.
“Cleo. Upstairs. Now.”
She obeys, but her eyes catch mine on the way.
And for one suspended moment, I see curiosity flicker in them.
Curiosity.
At me.
That’s dangerous.
Curiosity gets people hurt.
Killed.
Pinned beneath me while I decide what version of myself they get to meet.
She turns, hair brushing the strap of her nightdress, silk whispering against her skin like an invitation she didn’t send but I heard anyway.
My jaw flexes.
Not because I want her.
But because I don’t like wanting anything I’m not here to take.
Ashcroft returns, trembling, an envelope held between two fingers like it’s radioactive.
“H–here. Every penny.”
Normally I’d open it in front of him.
Count every note.
Make him sweat so hard he drips on the carpet.
But her scent is still in the air — something warm, clean, soft — and I need to leave before I follow it up the stairs and ruin my own night.
I take the envelope, eyes still on the shadows she disappeared into.
“It better all be here,” I say, voice dragging cold across the room.
“Because if it’s light—”
I step in close enough that he feels the heat coming off me.
“—I’ll carve the balance out of you. Slowly. One piece for every pound missing.”
He nods so hard I think he’s going to snap his own neck.
I leave without another word, but halfway down the drive I stop.
The upstairs light is still on.
There’s a faint silhouette behind the curtain.
Her.
Cleo Ashcroft.
Soft girl in a house full of lies.
I shouldn’t look twice.
I don’t hesitate for anyone.
But something in me marks her the way I mark men before I dismantle them.
And the thought is instant, ugly, and absolute:
If her father ever owes again, I’m not collecting money.
I’m collecting her.
Not as leverage.
Not as punishment.
Because some things aren’t business.
Some things are instinct.
And mine is simple:
She doesn’t know it yet —
but she’s already mine.
