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My body heard cut out your tongue and went hot all the way down. I am in so much trouble.

Somewhere to my right, a man murmurs, “Fifteen years, I’ve never seen him get his own hands dirty.”

And something in my head clicks into place, like a lock I didn’t know I was trying to pick.

Not a guest. Not some rich stranger with a thing for waitresses who talk back.

Behind me, the woman in peacock feathers breathes it so softly it sounds like a prayer. “He’s the Don.”

My stomach drops straight through the marble.

Of course. Of course the first man I’ve flirted with in six months comes with a title and a body count.

I flirted with him. I told the most dangerous man in this building he was the best view in the room.

Luca opens his mouth.

“Apologize,” the man beside me says.

Not loud. Not angry. He says it the way gravity says fall, like there was never any question how this ends.

“Look, I didn’t know she was…”

“Now.”

Luca flinches. Actually flinches, in front of everyone who matters to him.

His jaw works like the word is a bone stuck sideways in his throat. He looks anywhere but at the Big Bad beside me.

“I’m…” He swallows. His knuckles go white on the mic. “I’m sorry.”

Two years, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him say it.

But the apology isn’t what matters.

What matters is the room.

I feel it tilt, the way a boat tilts when something heavy changes sides.

Two hundred people just watched the power move, and every one of them felt it go.

Then the Big Bad leans in, close enough that pepper and amber close over me, and his voice drops to something meant for me alone.

“Which part of him should I remove first?”

CHAPTER 2

STEVIE

Aman just offered me body parts. As a gift. And I’m blushing.

He isn’t joking. I can hear it. If I name something, it’s gone by morning.

His breath on my ear, his voice pitched for me alone, and heat pools low and heavy in my belly at a threat of violence. Something is very wrong with me, and I don’t want it fixed.

For one dizzy second, I let myself want it.

“None of him,” I say. “I want him to remember tonight with every piece he’s got.”