My father didn't just sell me to a monster. He sold me to a grave.

“Good stock.” That’s what my father called me before he handed my leash to Dante Moretti.

I was the payment for a debt I didn't owe. A sacrifice to the Don of Chicago to close a loop my father couldn't manage. I thought I was being sold for money, but the truth is far more twisted: I was sold to be erased.

Dante is cold, calculated, and haunted by the ghost of the wife he couldn't save. He says he’ll protect me. He says a wife is harder to steal than a prisoner. But in this house of glass and blood, his "protection" feels like a beautifully gilded cage.

Then comes the needle in the dark.

Someone is moving through the estate like a shadow. Someone is drugging the staff—and they’ve already marked me. As the Moretti empire begins to bleed from an internal rot, I’m caught between the father who wants me dead and the husband who might be the one who destroyed my life three years ago.

Now, there’s a new variable in the equation. A secret growing inside me that makes me the ultimate leverage.

In Dante’s world, I’m a “hostage with a heartbeat.” And in a war where innocence is a luxury, I have to decide if I’m the prize... or the weapon that will burn his empire to the ground