Chapter 1 THE BREAK-IN

The mansion was too quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that made you feel safe. This was staged silence like a room that had swallowed a scream and was still choking on the echo.

Cady's breath fogged faintly in the darkness as she crouched behind the marble kitchen island, fingers wrapped around the black bag full of cash. Hundred dollar bills, stacks of it.

The bag is heavy. Real. Something she could hold while everything else slipped through her cracked grip. It held meaning a better life for her.

The security system was too old for smart surveillance but too rich for failure. She'd researched for weeks. Clocked the schedule of the cleaning crew, the private patrols, the blackout hours. Every pattern, every light flicker, memorized. This was supposed to be empty.

But the second she stepped through the window shards of glass like teeth in the frame she'd felt him.

A presence. Thick. Watching. Waiting.

Now she was frozen in place, her hoodie soaked with cold sweat, the weight of the mansion pressing down like a vice. She should have run. Should've bailed the second the sense of dread clawed up her spine.

But desperation made her brave. Or stupid.

Footsteps echoed.

Measured. Calm. Unhurried. Not boots. Bare feet on polished wood, like the devil himself had rolled out of bed to stretch his claws across the shadows cast by the full moon that could be seen through the broken glass window high in the sky.

She bit down hard on her lip. Shit she got in the wrong house.

Then his voice whiplash in the room.

"I'd offer you a sip of my coffee, but you look like the type to slip something into my cup."

Cady jolted. Whirled around, her hands clutching her throat.

He stood just at the edge of the kitchen-half-shadow, half-statue. Shirtless, sweatpants riding low on his hips like even gravity deferred to him. One hand wrapped around a cup of coffee, the other hanging loose at his side. No weapon. No cuffs. No badge on display.

But his eyes they pinned her in place more effectively than steel.

Ford Wilson.

The name meant a dozen things depending on who you asked. Hero. Tyrant. King of a city no one remembered voting for. She'd never seen him up close before. Only the headlines. The rumors. The whispers that followed in the wake of bodies that didn't make it to court.

"Didn't expect company tonight," he said, sipping slow, like this was a casual inconvenience and not a break-in.

Cady couldn't speak. Her throat was clogged with sandpaper and panic.

He walked toward her. Unhurried. Lethal.

"Let me guess," he said softly. "Rent's overdue. Boss shorted your paycheck. Maybe someone you love is sick. The usual story. You're not the first, you won't be the last."

She gritted her teeth. "I'm not looking for pity."

"Good," he said, eyes narrowing. "I don't offer it."

He stopped a few feet from her, head tilted like he was studying an exhibit. Not a threat. Not a thief. Just... an animal caught in the wrong kind of trap.

"You picked the wrong house."

She swallowed. "Didn't come for you."

"But you found me." His voice dipped, quiet now. "And that makes you mine."

Her stomach twisted.

"You're not calling the cops?" she managed.

He smiled, but it wasn't kind. "Why would I share?"

Her heart thudded wildly. "You going to kill me?"

"Not yet," he said, too casually. "You broke in. That's leverage. And I never waste leverage."

Something in her expression must have cracked, because his voice softened just enough to chill.

"You thought you'd find cash, maybe jewelry. Something you could hawk quick. But now you've stepped into something else, little thief. And the thing is..."

He leaned in, close enough she could smell the faint trace of whiskey and expensive soap clinging to his skin.

"I don't believe in second chances. Only alternate outcomes."

Cady took a shaky breath. Trapped. But not in a dungeon. Not in a cell. In a house with too many windows, too much silence, and a man who collected secrets like weapons and knew exactly how to use them.

And somehow, that was worse. A man who can kill her with just one hurl of that coffee in that large hand of his.