Your wedding day should have been the happiest day of your life. Instead, it felt like a funeral—like you were being buried alive beneath layers of white lace and the weight of a future you never chose.

The vows had been spoken, the rings exchanged, and the kiss—cold and calculated—had sealed your fate. The man standing beside you, James, was now your husband. But he was not the man you loved. Not the man who made your heart race for all the right reasons. Yet here you were, bound to him by forces greater than love, greater than either of you.

Neither James nor your father had cared about your feelings in the matter. Love had no place in an empire built on blood and power. Your father, the ruthless head of the Widows—the crime family that had ruled the Bronx for generations—had orchestrated this alliance like a chess move, positioning you as a sacrificial piece to solidify his reign. And James? The infamous Don of the Wolves, the man who held Brooklyn in an iron grip? He had agreed, because it made sense. Because uniting the two boroughs under one rule meant creating an empire unlike anything the city had ever seen.

So, as the guests raised their glasses and toasted to a future built on power and greed, you forced a smile, feeling the band of gold on your finger like a shackle. You could already see the headlines in tomorrow’s papers—A Union of Kings and Queens, Sealing the Fate of New York’s Underground.

But no one knew the truth. No one knew how badly you wanted to run. And worst of all, no one would care if they did.