Prologue

Aeval stared at the ceiling of her dingy apartment, memories clawing at her sanity. The past refused to stay buried, and her every breath was tainted with regret. She was a survivor, yet every night, she questioned if surviving was worth the agony. The streets of New York were her battlefield, but no amount of stolen bread could fill the void within her.

Then she met him.

A mistake.

A sin.

A drunken lapse in judgment that led her into the arms of a man more dangerous than the demons that haunted her. She woke up alone, his scent still lingering on her skin, the echo of his touch branding her soul. The deadliest man she could have ever crossed paths with—Lorenzo Bianchi.

Lorenzo

The name itself was a curse, whispered in the darkest corners of the underworld. A man of power, control, and wrath. His mere presence was enough to bring kings to their knees. But for the first time in years, he felt something beyond the numbness—an emotion sparked by a woman with eyes that held the depths of oceans, who vanished with his money.

Two weeks later, Lorenzo is a man on fire, driven mad by the need to find the woman who dared to leave him in a state of disarray. His heart, long thought dead, now beats with a ferocity he didn't recognize. She was no ordinary thief. She was a phantom, haunting him every second.

His mission in New York was almost complete, yet the distraction of her memory gnawed at him relentlessly. Until one night, a name was whispered to him with a cruel revelation.

Aeval. His brother's fiancée.

Betrayal ran deep in his blood, but this—this was something else entirely. A storm of fury and twisted desire brewed within him. How could she?

Aeval had known the moment she agreed to marry the man she didn't know that her life was over. It was a sacrifice, a penance for sins that were not her own. Her sister's mistakes were hers to bear, and if this was the only way to protect her, then so be it.

But destiny has a cruel sense of humor. The man she was to marry was not her mysterious one-night lover, but his brother, the very man who had unknowingly given her a glimpse of passion she would never taste again.

Lorenzo.

The name that sent shivers down her spine. The name she whispered in the darkest hours of night. The man she could never have, yet the man she could never escape.

Lorenzo. A name that spelled doom yet pulled her in like a moth to the flame.

His brother's bride she may become, but in his heart, she belonged to him—forever cursed to long for what was never his.

"Scream, cry, beg. The more you try to resist, the more tempting you become."

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