Three years as his fiancée, reduced to nothing more than a soulless trinket.

No going out. No friends. No opinions. Every breath I took was measured against Leo's mood.

For three years I obeyed him unconditionally, trying to warm the heart of this mafia tyrant.

Then today, in the fitting room at the atelier, his adoptive sister Alice snatched my couture wedding gown right off the rack. She didn't even have the decency to do it behind my back; she walked straight into Leo's arms while I stood there watching.

Leo barely glanced at me. Just patted her head and said, “It's just a dress. Let her have it.”

Three years of patience, and that's what it came to. A joke.

I looked at the two of them, that smug, triumphant, and I thought: Marciano, did you really think I wouldn't fight back?

That gown was supposed to be mine.

I'd waited six months for it at the most exclusive private atelier in Vienna. Eighteen seamstresses had sewn every inch by hand. The hem was studded with crushed crystal and black swan feathers.

Now it was on Alice.

The Marcianos had taken Alice in two years ago, an orphan, officially Leo's sister with no blood relation. At this moment, she was holding up the skirt and spinning in the middle of the fitting room, her thin heels thudding against the silk carpet.

“Charlotte, you don't mind, do you?” Alice stopped and held up the waist to show me how narrow it was.

She had an angel's face, and those green eyes were full of gloating. “Leo told me last night that fallen noble families like yours are all dried up and broke, and you have no right to wear something this fine.

“Next week at the St. Louis graduation gala, every top school in New York will have their eyes on me. I'm going to walk in wearing the Marciano crest and let everyone know who the real queen of this city is.

“As for you, the Ashford family's survival next month depends on Leo's goodwill anyway. So don't be difficult about something like a dress. It's not worth it. Right?”

I stood by the mirror, hands locked around the spare gown I'd just taken off.

I was the last heir to the Ashford family, and fallen or not, old blood still ran in my veins. I turned and looked at the man sitting in the leather armchair.

Leo Marciano.

Don of the largest crime family in New York, my fiancé. He was wearing a hand-tailored black suit, long legs crossed, a burning cigar pinched between his fingers. Not a flicker of anything in those grey eyes.

“It's just a dress, Charlotte.” Leo's voice was flat.

He exhaled a slow curl of smoke. The acrid scent of tobacco quickly hung thick in the air. “Alice hasn't been well. She just wants one good night at her graduation. We'll charter a flight to Paris and have another one brought over in time for the engagement party.”

“Leo. This is my engagement gown. It has both the Ashford and Marciano crests embroidered on it. You're asking me to give this to an adopted orphan?”

My voice didn't shake. But I was furious.

“The crests can be redone.” Leo tapped his ash, tone final.

“Charlotte, know your place. Your father's debts are kept alive by Marciano money. What I need is a fiancée who behaves, not a woman who picks fights with Alice over a dress.”

“Two years ago you refused to greet the mayor's wife properly at that dinner. I had you locked at the Long Island estate for three months. Have you still not learned?”

“Don't come at me with that cheap noble dignity routine. It doesn't play well. Get smart.”

Behave. Stay in line.

Every word he said was peeling back three years of everything I'd swallowed for the family's sake.

To keep my father from going under. To keep Ashford alive on Marciano funding. I'd filed daily itinerary reports to his right-hand man, accounting for every hour of my life.

I had told myself the obedience would matter. That this man might eventually feel something genuine. But in their eyes, it had only ever been what was owed to a woman who'd traded her dignity for money.

Looking at the two of them together, I felt sick.

I gripped the spare gown and worked my hand into the hidden pocket sewn into the inner lining.

In the mirror's blind spot, I unlocked an old phone I'd kept tucked inside and typed an encrypted set of coordinates into a disappearing-message app.

Alice clicked over to Leo on her thin heels and practically melted into him. She pulled at his tie, voice sugary:

“Leo, look, Charlotte's upset. Maybe I should just take it off. I mean, I really do love it, and if I wore this for the first dance I'd be the one everyone was looking at. But...”

Leo put a heavy hand on the back of Alice's head, calm, reassuring, then cut his cold gaze straight at me. “She's not upset. Keep it.”

I stopped looking at Leo. I stepped forward, walked straight up to Alice, and the moment her smug little smile hadn't quite finished spreading, I shot out my right hand and grabbed the French lace at the front of the gown.

“Charlotte — what are you doing?” Leo's expression went hard. He was on his feet instantly.

I didn't answer him. I put my arm into it and pulled down.

The sound the fabric made was ugly and final, a long, tearing shriek as the expensive hand-sewn gown split from the neckline all the way to the waist.

Lace and crystal scattered across the carpet. Alice screamed and scrambled backward behind the sofa, clutching the ruined bodice with both hands.

“Charlotte Ashford!” Leo's voice finally cracked with something that sounded like real fury, the kind that belongs to someone used to being obeyed. He was walking toward me with that particular coldness that had always meant danger.

I turned to face it. I dropped the scrap of torn fabric on the floor, raised my heel, and ground it into the black swan feathers and scattered crystal.

“She wanted it so badly, she can have it.” I looked at Leo and let myself smile. “And Leo Marciano, whatever we were to each other ends right here. Explain tomorrow's engagement party to the press yourself.”

The air went still.

Leo stopped less than half a meter in front of me. A vein at his temple twitched.

Behind the sofa, Alice wasn't screaming. She clutched the torn white fabric against her chest with both hands, eyes filling up with big, rolling tears that tracked perfectly down her made-up face.

She stepped back with exquisite delicacy, playing the wounded party to perfection. Her voice came out soft, a little broken: “Leo, please don't be angry at Charlotte. It's my fault. I shouldn't have brought up how the Ashfords need us next month. Charlotte was just stung, that's all.”

“But even if she hates me, she shouldn't have torn a gown with the Marciano crest on it. If tomorrow's engagement is called off, what does that look like for us in the press?“

“They'll say the Don can't even control his own woman. It's not just embarrassing for me. It's trampling all over your reputation.”

That hit exactly where she'd aimed. Leo's sense of power.

Leo's arm swung out. He grabbed my jaw with his rough, calloused fingers and shoved me against the wall.

“Take it back.” He looked at me with the cold gaze one reserves for a pet, hand tightening, voice coated in contempt.

“Charlotte. Don't try that cheap little-girl act on me. Do you know who you're talking to? Without my say-so, your father is dead by sunrise, and you don't even have the standing to beg on the street.”

“In this city, you are nothing without Leo Marciano. Now apologize to Alice, pick up that dress, and I'll let you put the ring back on tomorrow.”

Looking at his face, that absolute certainty written into every line of it, all I could think was how stupid I'd been.

“The Ashfords can go bankrupt and beg in the gutter before I'll take orders from a thug with blood on his hands.” I held his gaze and said it word by word.

I knocked his hand off my jaw.

The fitting room door burst open. Leo's right-hand man stood in the doorway, sweating hard, voice barely steady:

“Don. We have a problem. The current head of the Ricci family just showed up in person. They've got the whole building surrounded.”

Ricci.

Leo's eyes sharpened at the name. Ten years of territory wars between the Marcianos and the Riccis, and no love lost on either side.

The new Don of the Ricci family was brutal, unpredictable, widely considered completely unhinged.

“How many men?” Leo's voice went flat. He pulled on his jacket, covering the gun at his hip.

“Three convoys. All with heavy hardware. Don Ricci is asking, specifically asking, to see Miss Ashford.” The right-hand man shot me a timid, wary look.

Leo looked at me hard. No panic, just the confidence of a man who'd never been caught off guard. He figured this was just Ricci making a territorial move, pushing for provocation.

He flicked his jacket straight and gave a short, cold laugh. “Charlotte. Looks like your little tantrum dragged Marciano into a mess you had no business making. Stay here. Once I clean up outside, I'll come back and deal with what you pulled today.”

I smoothed out my skirt and walked around him toward the door. “I told you. We have nothing to do with each other anymore.”

The atelier's ground floor was already chaos. The classical music had stopped. Several large men in black overcoats had every exit locked down.

And in the middle of the hall, sitting on the leather sofa, was a man.

He had disheveled brown hair, head slightly bowed, turning a sleek silver butterfly knife through his fingers.

He heard the heels. He looked up.

He was younger than I'd expected, almost disturbingly pale, but the face was extraordinary, and what you couldn't look away from was the eyes.

Dark green, like something that watched you from low in the water.

Elton Ricci. Don of the Ricci family.

“Miss Ashford.” He closed the butterfly knife with a clean metallic snap. He stood, smoothed the front of his jacket with unhurried hands, and walked toward me.

Leo came down the stairs fast. Marciano men drew instantly, guns leveled at Elton.

“Elton. This is Manhattan, not your turf in Queens.” Leo's voice carried controlled menace. “Take your people and go. Nobody walks out of here tonight if you don't.”

Elton didn't look at Leo once. His attention didn't leave me until he'd stopped one step away. He bent slightly, took my right hand with something almost like manners, and pressed his lips to my fingertips. Cold as a blade.

“I heard Miss Ashford has an engagement party tomorrow. What a pity — your groom is a crude, tasteless brute.” He lifted his eyes, green and amused. “Why not consider a different groom? Me, for instance.”

“Get your hands off her, Elton.”

Click.

Leo had his gun out and chambered. The Marciano and Ricci men found each other's heads in an instant. The room tasted like gunpowder.

Alice, wrapped in Leo's suit jacket, drifted down the stairs. She moved to Leo's side, bit her lip, tugged at his sleeve, and her voice carried clearly across the hall:

“Leo, don't let them fool you. Charlotte just came at me upstairs over a dress, and now the Riccis show up out of nowhere? This isn't a coincidence.”

“She knew Ricci was your enemy. She conspired this with him just to humiliate you. Charlotte, even if you want to force Leo's hand, you can't do it by handing the Marciano name to an outsider.”

I pulled my hand quietly out of Elton's. I could still feel the cold from his skin against my palm. I didn't step back. I held Elton's gaze, those green eyes watching me like he was deciding how much I was worth.

“Mr. Ricci,” I said. “Are you serious, or are you just here to make trouble for Marciano?”

“The Ashford shipping routes through Europe are exactly what I need right now. And you, Miss Ashford, a woman like you deserves the most exquisite crown, not a life as collateral for someone else's problem.”

Elton tilted his head. The dangerous light in his eyes shifted. “Say yes. Tomorrow's engagement party happens with me as the groom. Every Ashford debt disappears from the New York books tonight.”

I caught Leo's face in my peripheral vision. The color had left it. Not from fear, he was too arrogant for that. His authority was being insulted, and that was the only thing that mattered to him. In his head, this was still a canary throwing a fit in its cage.

“Charlotte. Come here.” Leo stepped forward, gun still on Elton, but those bloodshot grey eyes locked onto me.

He still thought he had all of it in his hands. “Don't make me say it twice. You threw a tantrum, you put your hands on Alice, you tore the dress. I can write all of that off as female jealousy, nothing serious. But don't use the Riccis to test my limits.

“That kind of game stops being cute very fast. Walk over here. Come home with me. The wedding goes ahead tomorrow. Ashford's money arrives next month. That's my last offer. Don't be foolish enough to turn it down.”

There he was, still talking to me like I was something he was doing a favor for, still convinced I was the same small, manageable thing he'd always been able to push around.

I looked at his outstretched hand. I took one step back. Let it find nothing.

And in the shock on Leo Marciano's face, I reached out and took Elton's arm.

Elton pulled me in close. His hand settled flat against my lower back beneath the thin fabric of my gown. A heavy, possessive warmth seeped into my skin.

“It seems Miss Ashford has made the smarter choice.” Elton raised an eyebrow at Leo.

“Charlotte!” Leo moved a step toward me, gun shifting, pointed at my forehead now. “You're pulling this stunt to get at me? Drop him. Or I put you down right now.”

The armored floor-to-ceiling windows of the atelier shattered simultaneously, hammers swinging in all at once. Dozens of red laser dots bloomed in the dark and found the center of Leo's forehead, and every Marciano man's forehead, and held there.

Outside, scores of heavy black SUVs had sealed the block. The Ricci family's elite force had already reversed control of the entire street.

“Leo, can we just go, I'm scared,” Alice was pulling at Leo from behind, tears running. “She's not worth it. Don't risk yourself for a traitor—”

Leo's eyes were fixed on the arm I'd taken, like he wanted to burn a hole through my skin. The hand holding his gun had a small tremor in it. Humiliation and that feral need to own what he'd decided was his had finally broken the surface.

I stood in the sights of his gun, leaning against Elton, wearing something that would pass for a polite smile.

“Eight o'clock tomorrow night. The Waldorf Astoria.”

“Mr. Marciano, you're welcome to attend my engagement party with Elton.”