Chapter 1

Dante Lucchetti thinks I'm a gold digger chasing his family's money.

So he and his mother team up. They force me to sign a sick piece of paper — a three-year "servitude" contract.

Then they ship me off to the Lucchetti compound in the Adirondacks, deep in the mountains, hours from the nearest town.

No signal. No neighbors. No one who knows my face.

Every day, they bark orders at me like I'm a dog. I sleep in the basement. They feed me scraps. That first winter I wash laundry by hand until my knuckles split open.

"In three years, I'll marry you," he says. Flat. Cold.

The next week, he gets engaged to someone else.

Because he forgot. He forgot everything.

He forgot that at eighteen, he knelt in a rainstorm and begged me not to leave. He forgot he carved my name into his wrist with a switchblade. He forgot the exact words he swore to me:

"If I ever betray you, may God strike me dead."

Then he wrapped his Ducati around a telephone pole, hit his head, and lost all of it.

Three years later, I walk into his boardroom. Not as his slave. As the new head of the Sinclair Syndicate.

He digs up his old diary from when he was eighteen. He goes crazy and runs into my meeting like a man on fire.

I smile at him.

"Mr. Lucchetti. Your offer is thirty percent higher than your rival's. That's not how business works."

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A few years ago.

The engagement party.

Dante stands under the chandeliers with his fiancée on his arm.

He raises his champagne glass. Then he announces — loud, clear, in front of two hundred guests — that I'm his family's "personal servant." That I signed a three-year contract. Willingly.

The room laughs.

Somebody throws peanut shells at my face. "Look at this trash. She really thought she could hang onto Dante for three years?"

I'm on my knees on the marble floor, picking up scattered chocolates. My kneecaps hit stone. Dull thuds.

Dante looks down at me. His eyes are empty.

"Get lost."

I look up.

The scar is still there on his wrist. He cut it himself when he was eighteen — the letters "R-A-V-E-N," crooked and jagged. My name.

He forgot.

He crashed his bike. He hit his head. And he forgot every single thing about me.

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Rewind three years.

The Lucchettis sent me to their mountain compound. His mother arranged it herself.

"Raven, honey. Dante doesn't remember you. If you stay near him, you'll ruin his future."

She's sitting on her white couch, sipping bourbon. She slides a folder across the coffee table. "Sign this. Three years up in the mountains. When it's done, I'll introduce you two again. Fresh start."

I shake my head.

She smiles. Slow. Ugly.

"You don't sign? Fine. I'll leak the story about your mother being a homewrecker.

Every tabloid in the country will run it. Think about your Nana. Think about what that'll do to a seventy-year-old woman in a small town."

I freeze.

My mother had me out of wedlock. My grandma raised me alone.

She still doesn't know who my father is. If she drops that story, my grandmother is finished. Church ladies. Neighbors. Everyone.

I sign.

The second the ink dries, her people take my phone, my laptop, everything I have. All they leave me with is one thing. A yellowed photo.

Eighteen-year-old Dante. On his knees. In a rainstorm. Soaked through. Gripping my hand like his life depends on it.

On the back, his handwriting:

"Raven. Don't go. Wait three years. I'll marry you."

Then they drive me up to the Adirondacks.

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