​Bound by Blood and Border

CHAPTER ONE

The heavy scent of rain and wet earth leaked through the cracks of the chapel’s mud-brick walls, but it couldn't drown out the metallic tang of blood.

At twenty-four, my life was measured in quiet steps, morning prayers, and the scratching of charcoal on old parchment. I wasn't an heiress or a girl of privilege. I was an ordinary orphan raised by the church, a novice nun just months away from taking my final vows at Saint Jude’s Mission—a crumbling sanctuary sitting directly on the lawless border of the sss. I belonged to the silence. I belonged to God.

Until the night the world bled, and *he* broke through the sanctuary doors.

He was twenty years my senior, a ghost story whispered by the locals to frighten children, and the sole heir to the Vance syndicate—the most ruthless criminal empire on the continent. Dante Vance didn't look like a man; he looked like a force of nature draped in tactical gear and tailored dark linen. He was a predator who ruled the dark underbelly of the border cities with a cold, calculated iron fist.

We should have never met. A man like him had no business inside a house of God, and a girl like me had no business looking into eyes that had seen so much death.

But a brutal cartel coup had just erupted across the territory. His enemies were hunting him, and my mission happened to be the tactical high ground his mercenaries needed to seize.

When the oak doors splintered open under the butt of a rifle, the other sisters screamed, scattering into the shadows. I froze at the altar, a wooden rosary gripped so tightly in my hand the beads bit into my palm.

Dante walked in, bleeding from a superficial graze on his jaw, his sharp, silver-flecked eyes sweeping the room until they locked onto me. The air instantly left my lungs. He didn't look at me with reverence; he looked at me with a dark, possessive curiosity that made my skin flush beneath my heavy habits.

"Clear the perimeter," Dante barked to his men, his voice a low, gravelly purr that vibrated right to my spine. He didn't take his eyes off me as he stepped closer, his massive frame towering over me, radiating heat, gunpowder, and pure danger. "Well, well. Look what the storm dragged in. A little saint."

"You... you cannot bring your violence here," I whispered, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to be brave. "This is a sanctuary."

Dante let out a dark, mocking chuckle, stepping into my personal space until I was pressed back against the cold stone of the altar. He leaned down, his breath brushing my ear, hot and sinful. "There are no sanctuaries tonight, Little Bird. The cartel is coming to burn this place to the ground just to get to me. And if they find you here, they’ll tear that pretty habit right off you."

"Then let us leave," I gasped, my heart hammering like a trapped bird against my ribs.

"Too late for that. The borders are closed, and we're surrounded," Dante murmured. He reached out, his gloved thumb brushing a tear from my cheek with a terrifying tenderness that sent a jolt of pure electricity through my veins. He stared at my lips, his eyes darkening with an illicit, forbidden hunger. "But I have an idea. A contract. You want to save your sisters, and I need a front to move through the cartel’s territory without a full-scale war."

He pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from his tactical vest—a legally binding marriage license, stolen from the local magistrate's office during his escape.

"Sign it," Dante commanded softly, his flirty, dangerous smile cutting through the dim candlelight. "Be my wife for a year. I’ll protect your mission, and my men will ensure your safety. But remember the rules, Little Saint... this is a contract. A fake arrangement. No real intimacy. I keep my hands to myself."

I looked at the pen he offered, then up into the fierce, forbidden gaze of the man who was twenty years my senior. I was a novice nun, an ordinary girl of the cloth. But as the sound of cartel gunfire echoed in the distance, I knew my old life was dead.

I took the pen, signing my name next to his.

Dante smirked, taking the paper and tucking it away before trapping me against the altar once more. His eyes burned with a primal, suffocating heat. "Good girl. Now let's see how long we can keep those rules from burning to ash."