The victory at the Commission was a hollow one. I had survived the lions, but I was still trapped in the den with the king. Roman didn't speak on the way back to the estate, his silence more suffocating than the interrogation we had just left behind. He looked out the window of the armored sedan, his reflection ghosting over the glass—a man who had just claimed a woman as his own in front of the most dangerous men in Chicago and felt absolutely no remorse for it.
When we stepped through the front doors, the house felt different. It no longer felt like a prison; it felt like a stage. Every guard we passed lowered their head just a fraction more than they had this morning. Roman’s decree had taken hold: I was no longer just the daughter of a traitor. I was something else. An asset. A shadow
