The confessional smelled of old cedar and rotting secrets.Julian didn’t kneel. Princes didn’t bend to God, especially not a prince who owned the very ground the church was built on. Through the carved wooden screen, he listened to the soft, ragged breathing of the girl on the other side.Her.She didn't belong in his world of bloodstained crowns and legacy debts. She was pure, a fragile glass doll walking through a den of wolves. For months, he had watched her from the shadows. He knew her schedule, her fears, and the exact pitch of her voice when she was frightened."Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," she whispered, her voice trembling.Julian smiled in the dark, his fingers tracing the cold steel of the dagger in his pocket. She thought she was speaking to a priest. She didn't know the devil had intercepted her prayers."What is your sin, little bird?" Julian asked, his deep voice sliding through the grate like liquid velvet.A sharp intake of breath. She recognized the voice. It wasn’t the elderly priest. It was the monster from her nightmares. The prince who hunted her."You," she breathed, backing away against the wooden wall of the booth. "You're not supposed to be here.""I am everywhere," Julian whispered, pressing his face closer to the screen, watching her silhouette panic. "And by the time I am done with you, my sweet... you will look at hell and call it home."

The night that changed everything was supposed to be a celebration, but for Alita, it was a setup, a cruel betrayal by those she trusted most. The drinks had been spiked, the laughter and music a facade for the sinister plan unfolding behind her back. In a haze of intoxication, Alita stumbled into the wrong room, seeking refuge from the chaos outside. It was there, in the darkness of a stranger's bed, that she found a fleeting sense of solace. Little did she know, that chance encounter would set off a chain reaction of events that would alter the course of her life forever. Three weeks later, the consequences of that night would become brutally clear. A pregnancy test, a shocked revelation, and a family's brutal rejection would send Alita fleeing, forced to abandon the only life she had ever known. But it was only the beginning. Alita would soon discover the dark secrets her family had kept hidden for so long. The truth about her mother's death, the lies, the deceit... it would all come crashing down around her. Six years later, Alita returned, armed with secrets and a newfound strength. But the stranger from that fateful night was waiting, he has spent years hunting for the woman who vanished from his bed, and he has no intention of letting her escape a second time. In a dangerous game of obsession, secrets, and lethal desire, Alita must decide if she can survive the war she started—or if she will be entirely consumed by the devil who refuses to let her go.