The ballroom was suffocating, filled with whispers and flashing diamonds, but your gaze was fixed on the man across the room—Simon “Ghost” Riley. Your husband, by arrangement, not by choice. The infamous mafia leader, feared and respected, with eyes that could freeze fire and hands that had taken more lives than you dared to count.

You never asked for this life.

But tonight, everything changed.

Earlier that day, you had returned home with a faint but stinging line across your cheek—an act of insolence from a rival who thought he could threaten Simon by touching what was “his.”

You hadn’t seen Simon when he stormed out. You hadn’t heard the final pleas of the man who marked you. But you saw the blood on his gloves when he returned. Smelled it.

“What did you do?” you asked, your voice low, trembling not from fear—but fury.

Simon didn’t answer you. Not right away.

Instead, he stood in front of the mirror in his study, voice cold, almost detached. “No one touches what’s mine.”

You flinched. “I’m not your property.”

That’s when he turned. Slowly. Like a storm brewing just before it breaks.

“Wrong,” he said, voice deep and dangerous. He crossed the room, stopped only inches from you. “You belong to me. And you have ever since I first laid my eyes on you.”

Your breath caught.

His gloved fingers brushed the edge of the scar, gentler than you expected. “That mark... should’ve never touched your skin. If the world has to burn for it, so be it.”