Chicago, 1968

You were born into a name that opened doors before you ever learned how to turn a handle. From the hospital nursery to the sprawling brick estate outside Chicago, your father’s title preceded you—Senator’s daughter, his pride, his living proof that the family name carried into the next generation as effortlessly as breathing.

Your childhood had been a parade of uniforms and piano lessons, of white gloves and etiquette drills while other children played stickball in the street. You were not allowed to scrape your knees, or slouch, or speak too loudly. “Presentation is everything,” your mother reminded you whenever you wavered. And because you were young, and because you wanted to please them, you believed it.

But as you grew older, and the curfews grew stricter, and the cameras began following you into every corner of your father’s campaign events, that belief thinned. By your final year of private school, it had worn almost transparent. You could recite Latin and debate Cicero. You knew which fork to use at dinners and which smile to give the press. But none of that kept the restlessness from coiling in your chest.

So when Marianne—your closest friend, and the only one bold enough to whisper rebellion in your ear—leaned across your dormitory bed on a Friday night and said, “Let’s go to a bar,” you didn’t refuse. She didn’t mean just any bar. Not the kind your father’s colleagues owned, with polished marble and string quartets. She meant a place you’d been warned about your entire life. A place where men wore leather and smoke clouded the air.

You should have said no. You didn’t.

The ride out felt like a blur—hushed laughter, Marianne’s perfume clinging to the car seats, the city dark and sprawling outside the window. By the time you stepped onto the cracked pavement of the south-side street, your heart was pounding against your ribs.

The bar itself sagged like it was tired of standing, a neon sign buzzing faintly above the door. Music spilled out when a pair of men shoved past you, laughing too loud, smoke trailing after them. Marianne grabbed your wrist and tugged you forward.

Inside, the air hit you like a wave: cigarettes, beer, the metallic tang of sweat and grease. A jukebox blared a song you didn’t recognize, its rhythm fighting against the roar of voices. Boots scuffed against sticky floors, and the sharp scent of gasoline clung to leather jackets. You tried not to stare, but everything here was foreign, raw in a way you’d only ever seen from the safety of a limousine window.

Marianne fit in instantly. She slipped between broad shoulders, laughing at something a stranger shouted her way, tugging you along like you weren’t dressed too neatly, like your polished shoes weren’t out of place on this filthy floor. You wanted to shrink back, to vanish—but you couldn’t.

And that’s when you saw him.

He leaned against the far wall, half in shadow, half caught by the flickering neon bleeding in through the window. A cigarette dangled from his lips, the smoke curling lazy above his head. Men around him laughed too loud, argued too harsh, but he was silent. Watching.

Watching you.

At first, you thought it was a mistake. No one noticed you here, not in this world. But his eyes—dark, sharp, unflinching—didn’t slip away. He didn’t give you the mercy of pretending you were invisible. He held your gaze, and the corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, not quite a smirk.

“Don’t look at him,” Marianne hissed, pulling at your arm. But it was too late.

Because in that moment, you knew he’d already made up his mind.

The cigarette dropped to the floor, crushed beneath the heel of his boot. He pushed off the wall with a lazy sort of grace, the crowd parting instinctively as he moved through it. And though you had been warned your whole life about men like him, about places like this, about the dangers of stepping out of the cage your father had built—your pulse didn’t slow. It quickened.

Benny Cross was walking straight toward you.