71

It’s been months since Freya Adams died.
Everyone thinks it’s an accident, but Allison Adams knows better. Freya was her sister, and they were close. So, so close.
When the Adams family tries to get Allison to marry Paul Debarcio in Freya’s place, Allison is scared and tries to escape. Paul killed Freya, and he would kill her too, because she knows too much about his crimes.
Before Allison gets a chance to escape successfully, a special guest catches her.
Gregory Callahan. The most dangerous man Portland has ever produced. Even more dangerous than Paul.
Gregory is handsome, rich, and connected to dark webs of money.
And he’s more than willing to help Allison get revenge on Paul for the death of her sister.
If she becomes his bride.
————
Allison
I’m about to marry my sister’s husband.
Worst of all, she’d hate this wedding.
It’s drab, serious, stuffy. None of it was my choice-nobody asked my opinion on anything, from the dress to the flowers to the location. I’m stashed away in a corner room at the top of my future husband’s mansion, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s forgotten about me except for the women he hired to do my hair and makeup. That’s what I mean to this little ceremony. I’m a body with a last name, and that’s pretty much it. Might as well kill me, stuff me, and toss me out there on strings, so long as my corpse smiles, nods, and looks pretty. I doubt my sister’s husband would mind.
I dab at my eyes. The bathroom door’s locked. It’s the only way to get some privacy. I don’t care if the makeup ladies hear me crying in here, let them judge for all I care. They don’t have to marry their dead sister’s husband against their will. They don’t have to go through this nightmarish charade, parading myself around this hellish estate like I’m happy to be here, smiling and waving and greeting guests. They don’t have to die inside, bit by bit.
No, that’s only me.
“I miss you, Freya.” Saying her name almost makes me start sobbing again. “Is this how you felt on your wedding day? At least you looked so perfect. Are you going to be angry with me when I have to give that monster babies?” I choke back another sob. “I don’t want him to touch me.”
A knock at the door. I jump, sniffling and rubbing my face.
“Miss Allison? They’re waiting and your hair isn’t finished. If you’re feeling sick-”
I laugh once, sharply. “Tell them I’m puking my guts out. Will they call off the wedding?”
A short silence. “I’m sorry, miss, but-”
“It’s fine.” I stand, composing myself. No reason to take it out on this woman. She’s probably uncomfortable enough. Chin up, back straight. The perfect Bratva daughter. I can do this, even if it feels like a rot’s growing inside my belly, threatening to swallow me up. “I’m coming out.”
Once, I was my father’s favorite daughter. He never said it out loud, but he also didn’t have to. Freya knew it, but she didn’t seem to mind. Nothing ever fazed my older sister. “Papa loves you best because you climb trees,” she said to me once while we were out in the woods surrounding my family’s home. “He thinks you’re almost a boy.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” I said at the time, but really, I was pleased. I wanted Papa to be proud of me. He was always larger than life when I was a girl-a big man with a loud laugh, bushy eyebrows, a quick temper, and a sharp wit. He spoiled me and my sister, but he spent the most time with me.
He taught me how to dance, how to throw a baseball, how to tell a joke. He taught me how to control my emotions. He taught me to wear a mask, to never let them see how I was feeling. “That way, they can’t use it against you,” he said back when I was barely a teenager.
Long before he decided to force me to marry Freya’s husband.
Now, I’m embodying all of those lessons. All those nights and days spent drilling etiquette, learning history, talking tactics and strategy. Playing war games on big maps with tiny tin soldiers. Papa liked to pretend like he was a great general, but he just liked to read war books. He used to smoke a cigar, drink a whiskey, and read to me while I lounged on the couch in his study and drank too much soda.
Now I’m the one heading into battle.
A real battle against myself, my family, and the man I’m pretty sure murdered my sister.
The man I’m about to marry.
I wave away the hair and makeup ladies, only pausing to glance at myself in the mirror. My hands tremble as I fix the pins keeping my braids in place. I’m terrified of going through with this.
I remember the way Freya sounded the last time I spoke with her, only days before she was found dead in the bathtub, allegedly of an overdose. Even though my sister never once did drugs and hated the stuff. She sounded scared, terrified, and refused to speak above a whisper. I could barely hear her-wind kept whipping into the receiver. I was annoyed at the time because she wouldn’t talk louder and I could barely understand half of what she said, but now I’d give anything to go back to that conversation. She was babbling about something, a secret she found in Paul’s house and how she was afraid of what he’d do if he realized she knew, but she wouldn’t give me any more details and hung up abruptly.
She didn’t respond to calls or texts after that.
It was like my sister died the moment the phone disconnected.
Sickness fills my guts. I keep thinking about my sister, my poor sister, my best friend, the nicest person I ever met in my life, dead in a bathtub. I keep hearing the fear in her voice and imagining how she must’ve felt.
Murdered by her own husband.
The man I’m about to marry.
And the man that’s going to kill me too.
I grab my phone from the end table and shove it down between my breasts, lodging it in the bra I insisted on wearing even though it doesn’t really work with this dress, because fuck everyone, that’s why. Then I step up to the bedroom door, steadying my nerves, and turn the knob. I pull it open, step into the hall, prepared to march to my own doom, when I stop abruptly, my mouth falling open.
He’s standing there, staring at me, barely five feet away.
Paul Debarcio.
The Russian Lion.
Leader of the Debarcio Bratva.
My sister’s killer.
And my future husband.
Paul’s big, broad, with a square jaw and a hooked nose that looks like someone beat it into submission. His brows are blond, his hair thinning and buzzed short. He’s bursting out of his suit, like someone made it two sizes too small. His arms are like fire hydrants. His legs are like skyscrapers. The man stares at me with a vicious, terrifying energy, and I hear the women in the room behind me start to whisper.
I shut the door with my foot, cutting off my own escape.
Better to face him with my chin up.
I school my expression, the way Papa showed me, and look up into the eyes of the devil.