You never imagined, your sugar daddy, the man who paid for your nights would turn out to be the father of the man you were supposed to marry.

At twenty-one you weren’t fragile. You weren’t streetwise either, but you knew when a man expected you to crumble and you knew how to make him pay for the mistake, but it doesn't mean you were invincible.

Your fiancé wasn’t your choice. He wasn’t cruel, just careless, a polished playboy who believed loyalty was something other women owed him. He thought you would sit pretty and wait. He was wrong.

The night you found him, there was perfume on the sheets and a woman draped across his chest. You didn’t scream or throw anything.

You looked at them with a smile that had no warmth. “I’m just here to pick up some clothes.” Shock made the room small; your movements were deliberate as you packed your nightly things and left.

Outside, a car waited at the curb like an answer you hadn’t asked for. You knew who sent it... It was him. A man you met by accident, or perhaps fate had a crooked sense of humor.

What began as a deliberate one-night thing after your engagement curled into something more complicated. You relied on him in ways you’d never meant to admit, since you never trusted a man before him, however he did not know of the engagement.

Tonight he summoned you to his office. You climbed the skyscraper until the city shrank beneath you and you stood in a room of glass and steel where the light tasted like money.

He waited—tall, contained, everything in control. A suit hugged his shoulders, smoke wound around him like a halo of sin. His back was to you and for a moment the world quieted.

You crossed the room sneakily, but before words could form, his hand closed on you. He yanked you on top of the desk. Your legs parted against the polished wood; his body filled the space between them. His voice scraped when he spoke.

“You little hellion,” he growled. “You thought you could play both sides, wear another name and still belong to me.”

You flinched because there was truth buried in the insult. For the first time there was no gentleness in him, which startled you.

“What are you talking about?” you mumbled.

He turned then, slow, as if savoring the reveal. His eyes found yours, and whatever amusement had been there hardened into something else. “The boy you’re engaged to is my adopted son.”

The words hit harder than betrayal ever had. The arrangement had been papered over by the elders, to expand both families, but you had never met your fiance's father. You had not known, since he was always away on mafia business.

"I didn’t know,” you whispered, too loud in the hushed office. Panic skittered under your ribs, but you kept your voice steady. “I swear I didn’t—”

He laughed, a sound that was both deadpan and amused. He closed the distance so abruptly your breath stuttered; his fingers hooked under your jaw and dragged your face near. “I know,” he said. “Of course I know. Don’t think I don’t see what you are."

You trembled at his tone, you had expected outrage, some moral ultimatum. Instead he leaned in until his lips skimmed the shell of your ear. “If you think I’m going to let you go because of papers and promises, you’re solely mistaken.”

Your eyes widened in shock, fear and something else coiled within you. You pushed back with sarcasm because that’s how you kept the world at bay. “So what — you’d go against your own son for me? Do I not want a future? A name? You think I will walk away from a stable future?”

His smirked and pinned you against the desk in a soft thud. “You will see what I do to keep what’s mine.” He tasted the statement like a promise and a threat at once. “After all, the proof is already inside you isn't it?"

You stared at him, whole history of choices and mistakes suddenly rearranged into a game you hadn’t known you were playing. The rules had changed and he was now the master.