Chapter 1: Poisoned Ties
The photo of her broken apartment door burned into Sherry's vision like a brand. She stared at her phone, watching the image blur and refocus as her hands trembled uncontrollably. The door hung off its hinges, splintered wood jutting out like broken bones. But it was the message scrawled in red paint across her living room wall that made her blood run cold.
STAY WITH HIM. DIE WITH HIM.
She couldn't speak. The words caught in her throat, tangled with fear and disbelief. Behind her, Enzo's presence felt like a thundercloud, heavy and coiled with barely restrained violence. She sensed the shift in him immediately, the way his carefully constructed mask slipped just enough to reveal the predator beneath. When he moved closer, she felt the room's temperature drop.
He took her phone from her trembling fingers; his movements were deliberate and slow. His eyes scanned the message with an intensity that made her stomach clench. Something icy crystallized in his gaze, though his expression remained frustratingly unreadable, locked down tight like the vault of secrets she knew he kept.
"When did you get this?" His voice was flat and emotionless, which somehow made it more terrifying.
"Just now. Right after the voicemail." Her voice came out as barely a whisper.
He turned away from her, already pulling out his own phone and dialing with sharp, precise movements. "Ethan. We need a full security sweep immediately. Sherry's apartment has been breached. Whoever sent this was inside her home. "He paused, listening. "I don't care what it takes. Find them."
Sherry barely heard his words. Her mind was spiraling into dark places, replaying every moment of the past few weeks. The contract. The marriage. The secrets that kept multiplying like shadows in the corner of her vision and now this. Someone had been in her apartment, walking through her most private space, touching her things and leaving their threat like a calling card.
"Enzo..." Her voice broke on his name.
He turned back to her, phone still pressed to his ear and something in his expression shifted when he saw her face.
She forced the words out past the fear, closing her throat. "Is someone trying to kill me, or are they trying to kill us?"
His expression didn't soften. If anything, it hardened into a granite-like, immovable mass. He ended his call with a curt command and stepped closer to her, close enough that she could smell his cologne mixed with the faint scent of danger that always seemed to cling to him.
"I don't know yet," he said, his voice low and controlled. "But I'm not taking any chances. Not with you."
By morning, the penthouse had been transformed into a fortress. Sherry stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the sun rise over Manhattan in streaks of orange and gold that felt too beautiful for the nightmare her life had become.
Her thoughts were chaotic, tumbling over each other like dominoes falling in rapid succession. Her body still ached from Enzo's rough possession in the elevator the night before, but her heart ached far more with the weight of fear, suspicion and that buried scream still trapped somewhere deep inside her chest.
The audio from the flash drive echoed in her head like a curse she couldn't shake. "Her grandfather was a stain on this city. If Enzo gets tangled up with that family again, it's on him."
Was she just collateral damage in a decades-old war? A pawn in a game that had started before she was even born? A living mirror reflecting her grandfather's sins back at the world?
Enzo entered the room behind her, already dressed in dark slacks and a crisp button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Tension clung to him like expensive cologne, visible in the set of his shoulders and the hard line of his jaw.
"We're leaving," he announced without preamble. She turned slowly from the window. "Where?"
"Upstate. My father's estate. It's isolated and secure. No press, no phones, no threats."
"And I don't get a say in that decision?" The words came out sharper than she intended, but she was tired of being moved around like a chess piece.
His eyes met hers, dark and unyielding. "You want to argue with me right now, cara mia?"
She did. God, she wanted to scream at him, to demand answers and to force him to admit what he was hiding. But beneath her anger was something worse, something more primitive and terrifying. It was fear. Raw, visceral fear that if she stayed in the city, she might end up like the others. If there were others. She didn't know anymore. She didn't know anything except that someone wanted her dead.
So she nodded, swallowing her pride and her questions, and went to pack.
The car ride stretched for hours, silent and suffocating. Sherry sat beside Enzo in the back of the sleek, armored black SUV, feeling the tension coil tighter with every mile that passed between them. Neither spoke, not even when the city melted away and was replaced by dense forest that pressed in on both sides of the highway like green walls closing around them.
It wasn't until the house came into view that Sherry felt her heart squeeze painfully in her chest. The mansion rose from the woods like something out of a gothic nightmare, all brutal concrete angles and dark glass windows that reflected nothing but shadows. It looked less like a home and more like a fortress designed to keep the world out. Or to keep something terrible in.
She stepped out of the car slowly, her heels crunching against the gravel driveway. The house loomed before her, massive and imposing, and something deep in her memory stirred. She had been here before, she realized with a jolt. Not physically, not in her body. But somewhere in the dark corners of her childhood memories, this place existed. Red walls and screams echo down long hallways. It was a child's voice crying for help that never came.
Enzo watched her closely as she stood frozen in the driveway, but he said nothing. His silence felt loaded with meaning she couldn't quite grasp.
The inside of the house was colder than she expected, pristine but unlived in, like a museum dedicated to a life that had been abandoned long ago. Everything was minimalist, all stone and glass and brushed metal. Nothing warm. Nothing soft. Nothing suggested that actual human beings lived here. Just like the man who had been raised within these walls, she thought with a pang of sudden understanding.
Sherry wandered the halls slowly, her fingers grazing along the walls as if she could absorb the house's secrets through touch. Each room whispered something unspoken, stories trapped in the walls like ghosts. She passed a grand piano that hadn't been played in years, its keys covered with a fine layer of dust. A bookshelf filled with leather-bound tomes that had never been opened, their spines still crisp and uncracked. A bedroom with sheets pressed smooth and perfect but never slept in, never rumpled by dreams or nightmares.
She opened a door at the end of a long hallway and froze on the threshold. A study. Dark wood paneling, heavy furniture and the smell of old leather and older secrets. Inside sat a massive desk, ancient and imposing and behind it, a locked cabinet that seemed to pulse with significance.
A knot twisted in her gut, intuition screaming at her that whatever was in that cabinet, she needed to see it. She crossed the room quickly, her heels clicking against the hardwood floor, and yanked on the drawer handle. It was locked, of course. But she was a different woman now than the one who had walked into Enzo Blackwood's office weeks ago, asking for help. That woman had waited for permission. This woman took what she needed.
She grabbed a letter opener from the side drawer and jimmied the lock with trembling fingers, her heart thudding so hard against her ribcage she thought it might crack a rib. The minutes stretched like hours until finally, she heard it. Click. She opened the drawer slowly, almost afraid of what she might find.
