Chapter 2

Serena Cross was my classmate. She was on a hardship scholarship—couldn't even afford a couple of dollars for a hot meal most days. I always lied and said I'd ordered too much food so she'd eat with me.

When she said she spent the holidays alone, I brought her home to Ashford Estate. Past the iron gates. Past the guards with holstered weapons who nodded at me without expression.

Even though we had Mrs. Clark (Ashford Estate housekeeper) to cook for us, Serena would wake up early every morning to help in the kitchen. In the evenings, she'd ask each person's preferences and prepare dinner herself.

I thought I'd found a lifelong friend.

Until the necklace Lucian had given me vanished. I tore through the entire estate before finding it shattered on the kitchen floor.

That necklace was his gift to me—one of the few things that proved the man who now commanded killers had once been capable of tenderness. I'd treasured it like nothing else. Only Serena had known where I kept it. And she was the only person I had ever told about my shameful feelings about my stepfather.

When I confronted her, she knelt outside the front door in thin clothes, insisting it was an accident, saying she had nowhere else to go.

I had her things thrown out anyway.

She rose from the ground and limped toward the gate.

And ran into Lucian at the entrance. He was coming back from whatever business of mafia handled at two in the morning—his knuckles raw, his shirt cuffs rolled to the elbow.

He saw her shaking, barely able to stand, and his pity got the better of him.

I was furious—but more terrified that he'd learn about my feelings and pull away from me forever. So I let her scheme succeed.

I just never imagined they would become lovers.

Serena started sending me photos of them together. Intimate ones. His lips on her neck. Her hand on his chest. The kind of photos that made my stomach turn. Each image a knife twisted slowly between my ribs.

I tried to tell Lucian what she had done. His eyes went cold. He dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

“People like you, who only understand arranged marriages and family alliances—you don’t know what real love is. Stay out of my business.”

Things turned ugly. Lucian moved out of the Estate entirely—took a safehouse on the east side of the city. Grandfather said nothing, but I saw the disappointment in his eyes.

Tonight, Grandfather had asked me to deliver documents to him. That was the only reason I'd stumbled upon his drugged state.

But remembering the provocative look Serena shot me before walking through his door—that slow, victorious smile—I understood. This had all been her trap.

A girl from nothing, with ties to bottom-feeder gangs, scheming her way into the most powerful crime family in Northgate City. Drugging the Don was the most direct route.

In my past life, I had ruined her plan. This time, I would watch Lucian walk right into it.

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