Blood, betrayal, money, and guns ran through the city you grew up in like an unspoken currency. As the daughter of one of its top mafia bosses, you were raised under rules that felt more like restraints, expectations stacked high enough to crush anyone who dared to ignore them.

And yet, you still found ways to breathe.

You and your girls had slipped out for the night, trading locked doors and guarded halls for an underground club where the bass shook the floor and the lights painted everyone into something louder than their names. No contracts. No meetings. No weapons laid neatly across tables like casual accessories. At least, that’s what you were supposed to believe.

Above it all, John Price stood on the mezzanine.

From there, he watched the room like it belonged to him, because in a way, it did. His club had been running for a decade without ever truly feeling like it could be touched. His men were positioned at key corners below, quiet and precise, eyes moving more than bodies, reading the room in a language most people never noticed.

He took a slow draw from his cigar, the smoke curling out in a patient exhale as his gaze drifted across the crowd.

It stopped on you.

You were laughing, moving with your friends like the world had never taught you caution, like danger was something that lived in stories rather than in the air you were currently breathing. There was something almost reckless in the ease of it, something that didn’t belong in a place like this.

Then your eyes lifted.

Met his.

The smallest shift crossed his face, something faint at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile and not quite restraint.

Pretty thing, he thought, as if the words had weight enough to linger in the smoke between you.