CHAPTER 1 - HEIRESS

*FOUR WEEKS EARLIER*

•Rosalind•

“My condolences, Rosa.” Marcus DeVries, my father’s consigliere, pressed a heavy palm to my back as I stood frozen, staring down at my father’s body.

“That’s him,” I whispered. The words stole the last of my strength. I sank forward, sobbing into Marcus’s coat.

He pulled me closer, but something about his hold felt wrong. Uncomfortable. I stepped back, shaking and sobbing into my fist, my vision blurring, burning hot.

The car ride home was stifling. Marcus didn’t say a word as he drove. I tried to dredge up memories of him from my childhood, but all I recalled was a brooding man wrapped in a dark, suffocating air. Every man in the business carried a shadow, but his felt darker.

I was grateful when he finally pulled up to my father’s house. The lights glowed warmly, almost invitingly, as if waiting for their owner to walk through the door. I would be the one to break the news tonight.

I reached for the door handle, but Marcus stopped me with a loose grip on my thigh.

“If you need anything, Rosa, don’t hesitate to call,” he said, his dark eyes trying to appear comforting.

My skin crawled. I stared blankly at him. He had to be in his fifties, maybe sixties. I was just twenty.

I gave a tight nod and stepped out of the car.

Later that night, in my childhood bathroom, I gripped a pair of scissors tightly.

My papa was dead. My mamma had died fifteen years before him, and he’d never remarried.

Snip.

The last lock of hair slid down my shoulder, falling to the floor to join the shredded pieces of my father’s letter—a letter of apology for signing a contract that bound me to Viktor Marino, the son of the man he’d spent his life fighting.

My head felt lighter, and I realized just how heavy my waist‑length hair had been. Years of carrying it had made me used to it, the same way I’d grown used to carrying grief. For my mother. And now for him.

Losing my midnight‑black hair felt like a trade, a small offering for this new loss.

They called in an investigation, but no one believed they’d find the killer. A lone passenger in the back seat had somehow managed to kill two of the most powerful mafia bosses in New York. Darko Marino and my father, George Marlow. What the hell were they doing in that car?

I stared at my reflection. Cutting my hair helped, a little. I felt like a new person, which was what I needed. I wouldn’t survive in my father’s world as a shy, quiet girl.

I was his only daughter. Sent out of state when I was ten to keep me safe from the life he led. The mafia had taken his wife, he’d refused to let it take his child too.

I drew a shaky breath, remembering the signed contract I’d found hidden in the foam of his office chair.

Anger flared in my chest. I clenched the counter. Why send me to the best schools only to tie me to a man?

“You’re going to be educated and independent, Topolina,” he’d said. Only to trap me by signing that damned contract.

Why write a letter instead of telling me himself? Did he know he was going to die?

Or had he made a desperate deal with a man he despised, to save me from something worse?

The questions tangled until my head throbbed.

Whatever his reasons, I wasn’t going to marry a stranger for the sake of “security.”

I’d just graduated at twenty. My plans for a normal life would have to wait.

I had to secure my father’s legacy.

Even if the mafia didn’t want a woman at the helm. Especially not one raised out of state, living off blood money she barely understood.

All I had were childhood memories. Overheard meetings. The way my father commanded a room and silenced disrespect with the soft pull of a trigger. It always worked.

I’d heard the name Marino spat like a curse more times than I could count, yet he’d bound me to it.

As long as I could shoot, bluff, and negotiate, I would be fine.

But first, I had to survive Viktor Marino.