The copper tang of blood was the first thing that registered—a familiar, grounding scent that usually belonged to someone else's demise. But as the fog in my mind thinned, the rhythmic, wet sound of a leaking faucet began to synchronize with the throbbing behind my eyes. I wasn't in a field office. I wasn't in the humid back alleys of Bangkok tracking a serial killer.
I was cold. Bone-chillingly cold.
My eyelids felt as though they had been sutured shut with lead. When I finally forced them open, the world was a blurred smear of ivory and crimson. I was lying on a cold hexagonal tile floor. My hands were pale, thin, and shaking—not the calloused, steady hands that had dismantled high-yield explosives and held a Glock with surgical precision for fifteen years. These were the hands of a doll.
And they were soaked in red.
I sat up, a hiss of pain escaping my teeth. The movement triggered a jagged flare of agony in my left wrist. I looked down. A deep, horizontal laceration wept sluggishly across the radial artery. It was a clean cut, made with a silver-plated fruit knife that lay discarded nearby.
"Suicide," I whispered. My voice was a thready, melodic soprano that sounded utterly foreign. "Sloppy. Too shallow. She didn't even know how to die correctly."
I didn't panic. Panic was a physiological luxury for those who didn't understand the mechanics of survival. I was Celeste, the "Ice Queen" of Interpol's Behavioral Analysis Unit. I had spent a decade inside the minds of psychopaths until the lines between my clinical observations and my own lack of empathy had blurred into a singular, lethal efficiency. I had been shot in the back by a mole in my own agency. I remembered the heat of the lead, the taste of my own lungs collapsing.
I shouldn't be breathing.
I dragged myself toward the bathtub, my white silk dress—a wedding gown, I realized with a jolt of distaste—clinging to my thighs like a second, bloody skin. I reached for a discarded silk sash on the vanity and tied a makeshift tourniquet above the wound with practiced, brutal pressure. The bleeding slowed.
I caught my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling gilded mirror.
The girl staring back was breathtakingly fragile. Huge, doe-like amber eyes, skin the color of expensive cream, and dark hair splotched across the tiles like spilled ink. This was Isabella Montgomery. The name clicked into place like a key in a lock, a rush of "borrowed" memories flooding my neocortex.
Isabella: the twenty-year-old socialite. The sacrificial lamb of the Montgomery Billionaire Dynasty. Her father had gambled away the family's logistics empire in a series of disastrous shadow-market trades. To save his own skin, he had sold his only daughter to the devil himself.
Dante Moretti.
The name sent a shiver of genuine, visceral fear through the girl's nervous system—a residual echo of the soul that had just vacated the premises. I suppressed it. Fear was just an elevated heart rate and cortisol; I could manage that.
A heavy thud echoed from the hallway, followed by the muffled sound of shouting.
"I don't care if she's crying! Break the door down!" The voice was deep, vibrating with a terrifying, calm authority. "She is worth five hundred million dollars. I will not have my investment rot before the ink is dry on the contract."
I tilted my head, listening. Three men. One leader, two subordinates based on the cadence of the footsteps. The leader's gait was heavy but rhythmic—a man who moved with the certainty of a predator in his own territory.
I didn't have much time. I scanned the bathroom. No weapons other than the fruit knife. I was weak, hemorrhaging, and trapped in a body that had never done a day of cardio in its life.
I reached up, grabbing a bottle of expensive perfume from the counter, smashing it against the marble. I didn't use the glass; I used the alcohol-heavy liquid to quickly sanitize the cut before wrapping it tightly with a fresh towel. I stood up, swaying as postural hypotension threatened to send me back to the floor.
"Deep breaths, Céleste," I muttered. "Regulate. Adapt."
The door exploded inward.
The wood splintered, the golden lock snapping like a twig. Two men in charcoal suits stepped in, guns drawn but lowered, their faces masks of professional indifference. Then, he walked in.
Dante Moretti was taller than the reports had suggested. He was a pillar of dark elegance, wearing a suit that cost more than a mid-sized apartment. His hair was black as obsidian, slicked back from a face that was a masterclass in predatory symmetry. But it was his eyes that caught me—cold, grey, and utterly devoid of the "spark" of human empathy.
He was a sociopath. I knew the look. I had seen it in the mirrors of interrogation rooms for years.
Dante stopped, his gaze sweeping from the blood-stained floor to the silver knife, and finally to me. His nostrils flared slightly. The scent of iron and Chanel No. 5 was thick in the air.
"Isabella," he said. His voice was a low growl, dangerously smooth. "You've made a mess."
He walked toward me, his movements slow and deliberate. One of his guards stepped forward to intervene, but Dante held up a hand. He stopped inches from me, his shadow swallowing my smaller frame. He reached out, his gloved hand gripping my chin with enough force to bruise.
He forced my face up. He was looking for the broken girl. He was looking for the tears, the trembling lip, the pleading for mercy that the Montgomery girl had undoubtedly provided for weeks.
I didn't blink. I didn't tremble. I looked into the grey void of his eyes and did something Isabella Montgomery would never have done.
I smiled. It wasn't a sweet smile. It was the thin, sharp baring of teeth of a creature that had just found a new cage to break.
"You're late, Dante," I said, my voice steady, devoid of the octave of terror he expected. "And your entry was remarkably unsubtle. If you wanted to see me bleed, you could have just asked. I'm much more cooperative when I'm bored."
Dante's thumb tightened on my jaw. I felt the bone groan. A flicker of something—not quite surprise, but a dark curiosity—passed through his gaze.
"You tried to kill yourself," he remarked, his eyes dropping to my bandaged wrist. "A coward's exit. Your father told me you were a delicate flower. I didn't realize you were a defective one."
"The girl who tried to kill herself is dead," I replied, leaning slightly into his grip, my eyes boring into his. "You're looking at the woman who survived. And 'defective' is a matter of perspective. I'd say I've finally cleared away the clutter."
Dante laughed. It was a dry, mirthless sound that didn't reach his eyes. He let go of my chin, but instead of backing away, he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my damp hair, pulling my head back at a sharp angle.
"Do you know what I do to 'investments' that malfunction, Isabella?" he whispered, his breath smelling of expensive bourbon and cold steel.
"You usually liquidate them," I said, my voice an airy lilt. "But you can't liquidate me. Not yet. You need the Montgomery shipping codes to bypass the Atlantic blockade, and my father is the only one who has them. But he won't give them to you until the marriage is consummated and the alliance is sealed. If I die, or if I'm 'broken,' he flees to the Caymans and you lose your five hundred million."
The room went silent. The two guards shifted uncomfortably. This was information a "doll" shouldn't have.
Dante's eyes narrowed. The curiosity was turning into a cold, hard focus. He leaned down, his lips brushing against my ear.
"You've been listening at keyholes, little bird."
"I've been profiling you since you walked through that door, Dante," I whispered back. "High-functioning sociopathy. Narcissistic tendencies. An obsession with control. You don't want a wife. You want a mirror that reflects your own power. But a mirror is fragile. I'm offering you something better."
I felt his grip loosen just a fraction.
"And what is that?"
"A partner who knows exactly where the bodies are buried, because she's the one who dug the holes." I pulled back just enough to look at him, my expression chillingly neutral. "Make me your wife. Give me the resources of the Moretti empire. In return, I will give you your father's rivals on a silver platter, and I'll do it with a smile that won't make the evening news."
Dante stared at me for a long beat. The air in the bathroom felt heavy, charged with a sudden, violent electricity. He looked at the blood on the floor, then back at the girl who should have been screaming.
"You're not Isabella," he murmured, more to himself than to me.
"Isabella died on that floor," I said, stepping closer, ignoring the pain in my wrist. "I'm the one who inherited the debt. And I always pay my debts in full. Usually in blood."
Dante's hand moved from my neck to my throat, not squeezing, but feeling the rapid, steady thrum of my pulse. I didn't flinch. My heart rate remained at a cool 65 beats per minute.
"We have a wedding to attend in three hours," Dante said, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. "The guests are arriving. The priest is waiting. If you can walk, you will be at that altar. If you can't, I will have you carried there in chains."
"I'll walk," I said, reaching up to adjust the lapel of his suit with my uninjured hand. "But Dante? Don't wear the charcoal suit. Wear the black one. It hides the blood better when things get... messy."
Dante recoiled slightly, his eyes flashing with a spark of genuine intrigue—and a hint of something that looked dangerously like hunger. He turned to his men.
"Get the doctor. Patch her up. If she faints, wake her up. She's not missing her own wedding."
He walked out without looking back, but I saw the way his shoulders set. He was intrigued. He was challenged. He was hooked.
I slumped against the vanity once they were gone, my breath hitching as the adrenaline began to recede. My body was weak, but my mind was sharp. I was in the heart of a criminal empire, married to a man who would kill me the moment I ceased to be useful, and I was carrying a name that was synonymous with failure.
I looked at the silver knife on the floor.
"Welcome to the underworld, Céleste," I whispered, a dark joy bubbling up in my chest. "Let's see who burns first."