Chapter One-Nicole
The first thing I noticed was the quiet.
Not the normal kind of quiet that settles over a house at midnight, the soft ticking of the old hallway clock or the occasional creak of settling wood.
This was the wrong kind of quiet, the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up before your brain even catches up to why.
I pushed the back door open with my hip, keys still dangling from one finger, the smell of burnt coffee and old grease from the café still clinging to my clothes. My feet ached from the double shift.
All I wanted was a shower, three minutes of silence, and maybe the chance to fall face-first onto my bed before Tank started scratching at the door for his walk. I called out for Dad the way I always did, my voice rough from eight hours of forced customer-service smiles.
“I’m home. You better not still be at that table.”
No answer.
That wasn’t unusual. My dad had a talent for disappearing into underground poker games and coming home smelling like cigarette smoke and cinnamon. I dropped my bag on the counter, kicked off my shoes, and headed toward the kitchen, already planning the lecture I was going to give him about the light bill that was due in three days.
That’s when I saw the blood.
It had spread in a dark, uneven pool across the linoleum, thick enough that the edges had already started to dry. My father was on the floor in the middle of it, one arm twisted under his body at an angle that didn’t look natural, eyes open and staring at nothing.
For a second my brain refused to put the pieces together. I just stood there, keys still in my hand, the cold from the open back door pressing against my spine.
Someone was sitting at the kitchen table.
He had his back to me, perfectly still, like he’d been waiting. He wore a dark expensive suit. Those kind that didn’t wrinkle not even when a man had just finished killing someone.
I must have made a sound, some small broken whimper in the back of my throat, because he turned the chair slowly, almost lazily, and looked at me with the calmest gray eyes I had ever seen on a living person.
“Nicole Hart,” he said, voice low and even, like he was confirming a reservation. “Sit down.”
I didn’t sit. I backed up so fast I nearly tripped over my own discarded shoes, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to hurt. He stood in one smooth motion, taller than I expected, and blocked the path to the back door without seeming to hurry. The blood on the floor was still wet enough to shine under the cheap overhead light.
“You have two options,” he continued, as if we were discussing the weather. “You can marry me tonight, or I can hand you over to Dominic Cross. Your father owed him a little over a million dollars. Dominic doesn’t do payment plans, and he’s been very clear about what he wants as collateral.”
My mouth opened but nothing came out. The smell of blood was starting to hit me now, metallic and thick, mixing with the leftover grease on my clothes until my stomach turned.
“Why?” I finally managed, the word scraping out of me. “Why did you kill him?”
Something flickered across his face, too fast to name but he didn’t answer, he watched me with those gray eyes that gave nothing away, like he’d already decided how this was going to end and was simply waiting for me to catch up.
“The offer expires at sunrise,” he said. “After that, Dominic gets you either way.”
I looked at my father’s body again, at the way his hand was still curled like he’d been reaching for something. I looked at the small, dark hole in his chest that had ended everything.
The man in the suit didn’t move, he hadn’t even threaten me…..yet all he did was wait, calm as stone, while the world I thought I knew finished collapsing around me.
My phone was still in my bag on the counter. I could feel the shape of it through the canvas, Calling the police felt like a joke, people like Dominic Cross owned the police in this city. Everyone knew that, everyone who’d ever worked a late shift downtown and heard stories over the counter between coffee orders.
I swallowed hard, the taste of copper already in the back of my throat.
“What’s your name?” I asked instead.
He tilted his head slightly, as if the question surprised him. “Nate Kovic.”
I filed the name away like a weapon I might need later.
Nate Kovic.
The man standing in my kitchen with my father’s blood still drying on the floor, offering me a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all.
I looked at him for a long time, at the perfect suit and the calm gray eyes and the way he held himself like violence was just another boring part of his life. Then I looked at my father one last time and rage cold and hard settle into place behind my ribs.
“I’ll marry you,” I said, the words tasting like ash. “But I want one thing first.”
He waited.
“I want to bury him properly and I want you to stay the hell out of my way while I do it.”
For the first time since he’d turned around, something almost human moved across his face and he nodded once.
“You have until tomorrow night,” he said. “After that, you’re mine.”
He stepped aside, finally giving me a clear path to the door, and I walked past him on legs that didn’t feel like they belonged to me.
Outside, the Chicago night got colder and biting. I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and called the only person I trusted left in the world.
Reyna answered on the second ring, voice thick with sleep.
“Nic? What’s wrong?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, then forced the words out before they could choke me.
“He’s dead,” I whispered. “Dad’s dead and the man who did it just asked me to marry him.”
On the other end of the line, Reyna went completely silent.
Behind me, through the open back door, I could still feel Nate Kovic’s eyes on my spine, calm and patient and already certain I had nowhere else to go.
