PAID IN FULL

My stepfather skimmed millions from the mafia and traded me to Dante Moretti, New York's most ruthless boss, to pay his blood debt.

But Dante executed him anyway, and instead of letting me go, he locked me in his fortress as his personal property.

I became a prisoner in a gilded cage.

He controlled when I ate and slept, paraded me in heavy diamonds, and brutally murdered anyone who even looked at me.

Even the only guard who showed me kindness eventually betrayed me, selling me to a rival gang to pay off his own debts.

Dante slaughtered an entire warehouse of men just to get me back.

He knelt in a pool of blood, his hands trembling as he touched my bruised face, claiming I was his only weakness.

But his obsession didn't make me feel safe; it chilled me to the bone.

I was never a human being to him. I was just collateral. A pet he wanted to own and lock away.

So, during the chaos of a sudden blackout, I ran into the freezing night and never looked back.

Three years later, I had a new name and a new life in London.

When Dante finally found me, standing in my art gallery with graying hair and begging me to come back to be his Queen, I felt absolutely nothing.

I calmly handed him an envelope containing every cent my stepfather had stolen.

"The blood debt is paid, Dante. I don't want your money, and I definitely don't want you."

Chapter 1

I stared at my stepfather's teeth, like shattered bits of porcelain, lay scattered on the oil-stained concrete. His finger, quivering with the palsy of his terror, rose in my direction; he was offering my body to the most ruthless mafia boss in New York as if it were the only currency he had left to pay his blood debt.

The air in the warehouse was thick, reeking of damp metal and the stagnant memory of rain.

I stood frozen in the corner, the serrated plastic of a zip tie cutting into the flesh of my wrists.

On his knees before us knelt Carlo. A man who had once been a proud Caporegime in the Salvatore Famiglia—a man who had raised me with a heavy hand and a colder heart—was now weeping like a blubbering child. He had skimmed millions from the syndicate, tearing a hole in Omerta, the sacred vow of silence and loyalty.

The man standing over him was a statue against the tide of his tears.

Dante Moretti was the acting Underboss, a name that was a gravestone in itself, commanding fear throughout the city. Just last month, he had orchestrated the execution of an entire rival faction before his morning coffee.

He was a specter of violence dressed in a custom-tailored black suit.

When Dante slowly turned his head to look at me, my lungs forgot their function. His eyes were the color of a churning, winter ocean—dark and completely devoid of human warmth.

He began to move toward me. His measured pace seemed to shrink the space around me, his shadow falling across the floor long before he arrived.

He stopped so close that I could feel the stifling heat of his body, carrying with it the scent of expensive cedarwood and the acrid tang of fresh gunpowder.

Reaching out, he wrapped his large, calloused hand around my jaw. His grip was unyielding, a band of iron. He tilted my head up, forcing me to meet his flat, obsidian gaze.