Chapter 2

Damian didn't leave for work that morning.

Normally, he was gone by seven—out the door with a kiss on my forehead and a promise to be home by dinner. But today, he lingered. He made coffee. He sat at the kitchen table, watching me move around the apartment as if he was seeing me for the first time.

"Rory." His voice was careful. Measured. "We should talk about last night."

"Which part?" I poured myself a cup of coffee. My hands were steady. I was almost surprised by how steady. "The part where you told me you have a wife? Or the part where you told me you're a criminal?"

His jaw tightened. "I told you those things because I trust you."

"You told me those things because I was about to walk out the door."

"Are you still going to?"

I took a sip of coffee. Let the silence stretch. "No. I'm not going anywhere."

The relief on his face was so immediate, so genuine, that it almost broke through the wall I was building around my heart. Almost. This was the man who held me when my father died. The man who stayed up all night with me when my mother got her diagnosis. The man who knew how I took my coffee and remembered every anniversary and had never, in ten years, raised his voice at me.

There was a winter, four years ago, when I caught a fever so bad I couldn't get out of bed. Damian canceled every meeting, cleared his entire week, and sat beside me for three days straight. He pressed cold cloths to my forehead. He made me soup from scratch—badly, the noodles overcooked and the broth too salty—and fed it to me anyway. At three in the morning, half-delirious, I heard him on the phone in the hallway, his voice low and dangerous: "Cancel everything. I don't care what it costs. She's more important than any deal."

That was the first time I understood what it felt like to be someone's priority. Or what I thought was someone's priority. Now I understood: I wasn't his priority. I was just the person he kept in the safest, most secluded room of his life.

This was also the man who had a wife.

"The Moretti family," I said. "Celeste's family. Tell me about them."

He hesitated. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"I'm living in your world now. I should understand it."

He told me. Not everything—I could see him editing, softening, choosing words that wouldn't frighten me—but enough. The Morettis controlled the west side. The Ashfords controlled the east. For two generations, they had fought over the territory in between—the ports, the unions, the lucrative grey spaces where legal businesses blurred into illegal ones. Dozens of men had died. The war had nearly destroyed both families.

"Celeste and I got married to stop it," he said. "It was my father's idea. He called a summit with the Moretti elders and proposed a merger. The only merger they would accept was blood. So I married her."

"Did you love her?"

"No." He said it without hesitation. "I barely knew her. She was twenty-one. I was twenty-five. We'd met once, at a family function, years before. She didn't want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry her."

"Then why did she agree?"

"Because she didn't have a choice." His voice was flat. "Neither of us did."

I thought about that. A twenty-one-year-old girl, forced to marry a stranger to end a war. What kind of life had she lived for the past seven years? What kind of wife was she to a man who spent every night in another woman's bed?

"Does she know about me?"

"I don't know. Probably. The families talk." He reached across the table and took my hand. "Rory, I know this is a lot. I know I'm asking you to accept something no one should have to accept. But I meant what I said last night. You are the only woman I have ever loved. Celeste is a contract. You are my choice."

"Some choices come with consequences."

"I know. And I'll face them. Whatever happens, I'll protect you."

I looked at him—this man who could order a man killed with a phone call, who ran an empire built on fear and violence and blood, who had lied to me for seven years—and I realized that he meant it. He would protect me. He would do anything for me.

Except be honest. Except be loyal. Except be the man I deserved.

"Okay," I said. "I'll stay."

He kissed me. I let him. And when he left for work an hour later, I waited exactly ten minutes before I opened his laptop.

His password was the same as always: our anniversary. The irony was not lost on me.

I spent the rest of the day learning everything I could about the Ashford family. Their businesses, their properties, their connections. The Moretti family. Celeste Ashford, née Moretti. The peace treaty. The territories. The men who worked for them. The men who had died for them.

I took notes. I saved files. I built a dossier, piece by piece, the way I'd been trained to do before I gave up my career for a man who didn't deserve it.

Because I was not just Rory Sinclair, the woman who loved Damian Ashford. Before I was his, I was a journalist. An investigative reporter for the New York Independent. One of the best. I had broken stories that sent corrupt politicians to prison. I had stood up to men more powerful than Damian and made them answer for what they did.

I had given all of that up for love.

Now I was going to take it back.

That evening, I went to see my mother.

She was in the private hospital room Damian had arranged for her—the best facility in the city, with round-the-clock care and doctors who were among the finest in their fields. The room was filled with flowers. Cards lined the windowsill. My mother, pale and thin but still smiling, was propped up against a mountain of pillows.

"Rory!" Her face lit up when she saw me. "Come here. Tell me everything. How is married life?"

I sat beside her bed and held her hand. "It's fine, Mom. Everything's fine."

"Fine? That's all you have to say? You married the love of your life yesterday. I want details. Was the ceremony beautiful? Did you cry? Did Damian cry? I bet he cried. That boy has always been sentimental."

I forced a smile. "He didn't cry. But he teared up a little."

"Ha! I knew it." She squeezed my hand. "Your father would have been so happy. He always said Damian was the best thing that ever happened to you."

The best thing that ever happened to me. I thought about the box in the closet. The gun. The photographs. The wife he'd been hiding for seven years.

"Yeah," I said. "He really is."

I stayed until she fell asleep. Then I walked out of the hospital and stood on the sidewalk, staring at the city skyline. Somewhere out there, Damian was running his empire. Somewhere out there, Celeste Ashford was living in a mansion I'd never seen. And somewhere out there, the truth was waiting to be uncovered.

I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in years.

"Margaret Chen. This is Rory Sinclair. I need your help."

A pause. Then: "Rory. It's been a long time."

"I know. I'm sorry. But this is important." I took a breath. "I need access to the newspaper's archives. Everything on the Ashford family. The Moretti family. Any organized crime investigations in the last ten years. Can you get me in?"

Another pause. Longer this time. "Rory, what are you getting yourself into?"

"The story of my life," I said. "Literally."

Margaret was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Come to the office tomorrow morning. I'll have the files ready."

"Thank you, Marg."

"Don't thank me yet. Whatever you're about to do—be careful. The Ashfords are not people you cross."

"I know." I looked up at the darkening sky. "But neither am I."