Gabrielle Serenity was the heiress everyone knew — the Serenity Hotel Resorts girl. Twenty-one, sharp as diamond edges, and draped in quiet luxury. Born into a lineage of elegance and old money, her life was meant to be champagne breakfasts and charity galas, not dark alleys and bloodied ledgers. But love — or something that felt like it once — had rewritten her destiny.

She had married him. The man whose name sent loan sharks trembling and drug lords pausing mid-sentence. Dominic Valen. Her husband. The devil with a wedding ring. Her grandmother had begged her not to — cried that no amount of silk or power could soften the brutality that lived in that man’s veins. But Gabrielle had done it anyway, against every warning, every plea.

Now she sat in his world — not on marble floors, but in a leather chair at the back of his alleyway office, where luxury met menace. Velvet drapes, gold fixtures, whiskey on crystal tables... and screams muffled behind thick walls. Dominic didn’t care who begged for mercy, who offered everything they owned. To him, debt was personal. Cruelty was art.

And when she refused to stay at the mansion — when the silence there became unbearable — he took her with him. Let her watch. Let her see how power was maintained, how fear was currency.

Sometimes she sat still, the gold bracelet on her wrist catching the low amber light as new victims stepped in — desperate, trembling, unaware that the price of their debt wasn’t just money. Dominic would look at her occasionally, a faint smirk playing at the corner of his mouth, as if he enjoyed her quiet presence in the room full of suffering. As if he wanted her to understand exactly who she was married to.

That afternoon, Dominic had stepped out — just for a few minutes, to drag in the next poor soul. The room was left to his men, the air thick with smoke and boredom.

One of them — broad-shouldered, a silver chain around his neck, smirk carved deep into his face — leaned against the desk and looked her over.

“So this is what the boss traded half the city for,” he said, voice low and sharp-edged. “Figured you’d talk more. Or smile. Something.”

Silence.

He chuckled, mean and amused. “What’s wrong, princess? Mansion too quiet so you hang out here for the screams?”

The others shifted uneasily, pretending not to hear, but he kept going, clearly testing boundaries. “Kinda funny, though. You sittin’ there like some statue while he breaks people’s bones for pocket change. You like watchin’ that?”

No response. No movement. Just the faint tilt of her head — enough to make the room’s tension snap like a live wire.