I bit down on my lower lip so hard it split, swallowing the pain whole.

"Deal."

The Maybach climbed the hillside and pulled through the gates of the Finley estate.

This was the vantage point that overlooked the entire Capital—and the gilded cage Christian Finley had built just for me.

The car door opened. Two rows of bodyguards in black stood at perfect ninety-degree bows.

"Welcome home, Mrs. Finley."

Their voices rang out in unison, echoing across the grounds.

I dragged my battered body onto the red carpet. Every step sent a tearing pain ripping through my abdomen.

Christian didn't offer a hand. He watched me struggle with the detached interest of a man observing something beneath him.

That was when my old phone buzzed.

Dennis had slipped it to me through someone before my release—a lifeline, he'd called it. The screen lit up with his name. Now, the sight of it was nothing but a sick joke.

Christian raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to answer.

I hit the green button and put it on speaker.

"Margot! Let me explain!"

Dennis's voice burst through, frantic and ragged.

"Nellie is just a pawn I'm using to keep the rival syndicate in check! Once she has the baby, I'll get rid of her!"

I let out a cold laugh, staring at the dried blood still caked under my fingernails.

"Your pawn is carrying your child and gunning for my seat. What do you take me for, Dennis? Your garbage collector?"

"Don't be reckless and marry that lunatic Finley! He'll destroy you! Where are you? I'm sending people right now—"

He was still trying to work me with that nauseating silver tongue of his.

"You've got a record now, so just let Nellie have the title. But I swear, you're the only one in my heart!"

Christian stepped up behind me. Cold lips pressed against the side of my neck, and he let out a slow, deliberate sound—a wet, suggestive pull of skin that was impossible to misinterpret.

I lowered my lashes. My voice came out laced with contempt.

"Stop calling, Dennis. You make me sick."

The line went dead.

Christian's arms slid around my waist from behind, his burning chest flush against my spine.

"Can't handle it already?"

His long fingers caught a strand of my damp hair and lifted it, his tone dripping with undisguised mockery.

"Your old flame seems pretty convinced you'll crawl back to him like a dog."

I ignored the provocation and closed my eyes.

Five years of hell behind bars had ground my dignity and expectations down to dust.

"Get me a doctor. I need to recover as fast as possible."

I opened my eyes and pulled free from his hold, sweeping a cool gaze across the sprawling estate.

"In three days, at the syndicate summit, I'm going to take back what's mine. Personally."

Christian's eyes narrowed. A thin, derisive smile pressed across his lips.

Then his hand shot out and clamped around the back of my neck, forcing my face upward to meet his.

"Know your place, Margot. You're a toy I paid a fortune for. You don't get to give me orders."

His grip was crushing. The vertebrae in my neck—barely healed—crackled under the pressure.

Tears welled from sheer physical reflex, pooling at the rims of my eyes. I forced every last one of them back.

"Even a toy needs claws if it's going to tear apart prey for its master. Wouldn't you agree?"

I held his stare, a twisted smile curling at the corner of my mouth.

Christian studied me for several long seconds. Then he released his grip and let out a quiet laugh.

"Good. I look forward to the show. Don't disappoint me—or I'll throw you right back into that kennel."

For the next three days, I was confined to the top floor of the estate.

A private medical team stood on call around the clock, pumping expensive drugs into my broken body to piece it back together.

Every night, the old wound in my abdomen flared up, the pain so vicious it sent me writhing across the bed.

Christian sat on the sofa not far away, swirling a glass of red wine, watching with cold detachment.

He never offered an ounce of sympathy. Only when I was on the verge of passing out from the agony did he toss out a single, frigid line.

"Remember this pain. It's the price of your stupidity."

On the morning of the third day, the butler delivered a pure black couture trench coat.

I stood before the floor-length mirror, staring at the woman reflected back at me. Pale face. Vicious eyes.

When I changed and came downstairs, Christian was sitting in the dining room, flipping through the morning paper.

"Ready?"

He didn't bother looking up. His tone was offhand, almost bored.

"Let's go."

I pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, hiding the ugly constellation of cigarette burns across the backs of my hands.

The motorcade headed toward the East District. The territory I'd once bled to claim.

Inside the car, Christian handed me a file.

"Have a look. A little appetizer from your dear lover."

My expression didn't change as I opened the folder. Then my pupils contracted sharply.

Inside was a stack of high-resolution photographs.

In them, Tyler Briggs, my most capable enforcer, was being pinned facedown in the mud by several men and beaten.

His legs had been broken. They bent at sickening, unnatural angles.

And standing off to the side, watching with cool indifference, was Dennis's new woman. Nellie Fox.

"Dennis froze every single one of your old Syndicate accounts. Put the word out, too. Anyone who dares follow you gets the same treatment as that cripple."

Christian leaned back against his seat, amusement flickering in his voice.

"Ms. Delgado, you're a general without an army. How exactly do you plan to deal with this rabid dog?"

My fingers crushed the edge of the photograph.

The savage fury I'd been forcing down in my chest was clawing its way loose.

Dennis. You manage to disgust me more every single time.

"Mr. Finley needn't concern himself."

I tore the photographs to pieces, slowly, deliberately, and let the fragments scatter across the cabin.

"When dealing with a rabid dog, you just knock its teeth out."

The main hall of the East District Syndicate was buzzing today.

The heavy mahogany doors stood wide open. Inside, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Dozens of chapter bosses and elders sat along both sides of the hall, arranged by rank and seniority.

The moment I stepped through the doors, the noise died.

Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto me.

In the seat of power at the head of the hall sat not Dennis.

It was Nellie Fox, draped in a designer Chanel suit, belly swollen and on full display.

Dennis stood faithfully at her side, one hand hovering protectively over her waist.

When he saw me, something flickered in his eyes. Instinct pulled him forward a step.

Then he glanced at Christian behind me and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Margot, you're finally here."

Nellie was the first to break the silence, her voice dripping with syrupy sweetness, so saccharine it could rot teeth.

"Dennis said you weren't feeling well, so he asked me to host today's handover ceremony on your behalf. You won't blame me for overstepping, will you?"

As she spoke, she made a show of stroking her belly. The provocation couldn't have been more blatant.

I didn't spare her a glance. I walked straight to the center of the hall, my gaze cutting across every elder seated along the sides.

These men. Every last one of them used to trail behind me, calling me their queen.

And now they sat here, watching in silence while some bed-climbing nobody perched in my chair and lorded it over them.

"Dennis. Where is my man?"

I ignored Nellie entirely and went straight for him.

Dennis couldn't meet my eyes. He cleared his throat.

"Margot, Tyler didn't know his place. He disrespected Nellie. I just had someone teach him a small lesson."

"A little discipline?"

I let out a cold laugh and closed the distance between us, one step at a time.

"You shattered both his legs. You call that a little discipline?" My voice cut through the hall. "Dennis, have you forgotten who took a bullet for you when your enemies had you cornered?"

Several of the senior syndicate bosses lowered their heads in shame.

Being called out in front of everyone was more than Dennis could stomach. His face twisted, and he snarled through clenched teeth.

"Margot! Don't push your luck! You're a convicted felon now—you can't touch a single piece of business in the East District!"

He jabbed a finger toward Nellie's belly, using it like a shield for his betrayal.

"Nellie comes from a clean background, and she's carrying my child. She's the only one who can sit in that chair and keep the brothers fed!"

"A clean background?"

I couldn't help it. I laughed—loud and sharp.

"She's an illegitimate daughter planted here by a rival syndicate, and you're standing there talking to me about clean backgrounds? Dennis, is your skull packed with nothing but shit?"

"Shut your mouth!"

Nellie shot to her feet, finger stabbing toward my face.

"You worthless convict! Dennis doesn't want you anymore—what are you doing crawling back here like you have no shame? Someone get her out of here!"

A handful of Dennis's new inner circle closed in immediately, weapons already in hand.

I didn't move. Didn't even lift my gaze.

Christian's men drew their guns in the same breath. Cold, black muzzles leveled directly at the skulls of every last one of those lackeys.

The air in the hall turned to ice.

Dennis pulled Nellie behind him, glaring at Christian.

"Christian Finley! This is the East District! You think you can pull this here?"

Christian adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses with deliberate slowness. A mocking smile curled at the corner of his lips.

"Mr. Henson, I'm simply accompanying my wife to collect what belongs to her. As for your little crew—they're not worth dirtying my hands over."

He turned to me, amusement glinting in his eyes.

"Margot. Get it done. Don't waste time."

I drew a deep breath, forcing down the pain churning in my abdomen, and pulled a battered flash drive from my pocket.

"Dennis, you really thought freezing the accounts and crippling Tyler would be enough to make me bow?"

I held the flash drive high, my voice dropping to something glacial.

"Every dirty transaction you've run for the past five years is on this drive. Every last entry in your secret ledger. One press of a button, and you and your pristine little wife can spend the rest of your lives behind bars."

The color drained from Dennis's face the instant he saw it.

He knew exactly what was on that drive.

Before I went to prison, I'd made a contingency—quietly copying the East District's core transaction records and hiding them where no one would think to look.

"Margot Delgado! You dare threaten me?!"

Dennis snapped. He ripped the pistol from his waistband and leveled it between my eyes.

"Hand over that drive! Or I swear you won't walk out of here alive!"

The tension in the hall was suffocating.

Every person in that room held their breath, unable to believe that Dennis had actually drawn a gun on the woman who once nearly died for him.

Nellie cowered behind his back, venom glittering in her eyes, silently willing the bullet to fly.

I stared down the barrel without blinking.

I knew Dennis better than anyone.

Greedy. Selfish. But underneath all that bluster, he was a coward to the bone.

He would never pull that trigger. He was too afraid of dying, too afraid of losing everything he'd stolen.

"Go ahead. Shoot."

I stepped forward and pressed my forehead against the cold steel of the muzzle.

"Pull the trigger, Dennis. I dare you." My voice was steady, quiet, absolute. "The second my heart stops, this ledger lands on a federal agent's desk. I guarantee it."