Chapter 2

In our world, a man drowning in debt belongs to whoever buys the paper.

That's how I got Julian Cross.

Three years ago, he was eight figures underwater.

Wharton pedigree, a face made for magazine covers, and a gambling habit that had bled his accounts dry.

The people he owed were forty-eight hours from putting him in the ground.

The auction was an old tradition in my world.

Bad debt went up on a stage, and whoever wanted the man, whether whole or in pieces, made an offer.

Julian came up last. The crowd had already thinned.

His medical file read like a liability: compromised liver, panic disorder, no stomach for crew work or even organ sell.

A man who can't earn, or has no value left to offer, is scrap in my world.

And scrap often ends up in the sea.

Julian knew it.

He stood on that stage in a washed-out shirt, and his eyes moved across every face in the room until they landed on mine.

The only woman at the table.

He didn't beg.

He just said, clearly, "Buy me. I'll earn it back for you inside a year."

"I've got a diploma and a license in my pocket, and I can put a clean face on anything you want to run through my floor."

The room went quiet.

He was smart. He pitched me instead of pleading.

I had just taken over the Vescari Casino from my father.

The Family needed a legitimate front, a man polished enough to sit across from senators at charity dinners while we moved what we needed to move underneath.

Julian was cheap, pretty, Wharton-stamped, and he came with a license already in hand.

Low risk. So I took him.

And I hate to admit it, but, yes, I was also attracted to him.

He was so different from the men in my world.

Almost too clean and too proud.

I paid off his debt. Burned the paper. Handed him the keys to The Vescari and told him to run it like it was his.

I even gave him the company black card. No limit.

The suits. The watch. The car. The apartment on Rittenhouse.

I built Julian into the one and only face of the Vescari empire.

That first year, we were inseparable.

The night The Vescari cleared its first million, Julian came home, pouting and showing off like a kid with his report card.

"I didn't disappoint you, did I?"

"You did good."

He swept me off my feet, and after that, we had a year-long honeymoon phase.

That was when I even started dreaming about our wedding.

Before Julian, I never believed in love.

But with him, I did. I really thought there could be an us.

Then the business expanded. The casino became more successful than either of us had imagined.

Then Julian started coming home late almost every night.

Then came the arguments about how to run things.

Then Father pushed me to take Chloe into the casino, saying she needed training so she wouldn't just lie around swiping cards all day.

Chloe. My stepsister. The soft one.

Big eyes, small voice, could cry on command.

She slid into The Vescari, and from day one, I could feel Julian changing more.