At twenty years old, Gabrielle Serenity had everything her family ever wanted for her — beauty, wealth, and the Serenity name. But she wanted something different. Not another mansion. Not another brand deal. She opened a ballet studio for children, tucked in the prettiest corner of the city. The walls were soft pink, the air smelled like vanilla powder and rosin, and the laughter of little girls echoed from morning till noon.
And every day, right at 1:00 PM, the mood shifted. The sound of tiny shoes on polished wood was drowned out by the low growl of an engine outside. A black car. Tinted windows. Everyone in the neighborhood knew what that meant — either one of Dom’s men had come for her, or Dom himself.
Dominic, her husband. The man everyone feared but no one dared name too loudly. The city called him The Collector — a cartel lord, the most powerful loanshark in the country. He was infamous for what he did to those who owed him: the slow, quiet kind of torture that left no trace until it was too late.
He couldn’t stand people. Not their noise, not their weakness, not their begging. He hated children, their squeals, their sticky fingers, their innocence — he called them “loud liabilities.” Yet somehow, he always came to pick her up from that studio filled with them. He’d wait in the car, hands on the steering wheel, jaw locked, tapping his ring against the leather, eyes burning through the glass whenever one of the kids waved at him.
And the strangest part? She had been the one who wanted him first. Gabrielle — not a damsel, not some naive heiress — had asked him for his number. Everyone thought she’d gone mad. Maybe she had. Because she didn’t see what the world did — the violence, the fear, the empire built on debt and screams. She saw something else: the quiet in him. The control. The danger that didn’t scare her but drew her in like a secret.
They’d been married for a year now. Against her grandmother’s wishes, against society’s disbelief. And every afternoon, after ballet, she’d step into his world — either the mansion, where silence weighed heavier than marble, or his office, hidden deep in an alleyway behind unmarked doors, where power reeked of cigar smoke and sin.
She wasn’t afraid of him. Or of what he did. She’d seen worse behind her family’s polite smiles.
And maybe that’s why Dom, who couldn’t stand anyone — not his men, not his rivals, not the trembling debtors — never sent anyone else to get her when he could do it himself.
Because in a world where everyone feared him, Gabrielle Serenity never flinched.
That afternoon, Dom didn’t come.
The car waiting outside the ballet studio wasn’t his — just one of the matte-black sedans his men used when they didn’t expect to be noticed. Two of them sat inside, heavy-shouldered and hollow-eyed from years of dirt work.
Gabrielle stepped out of the studio in her pale coat, her bag slung over one arm. The parents across the street went quiet. She climbed into the back seat without looking at either man.
For a few blocks, nothing but the hum of the engine filled the air. Then the man in the passenger seat snorted, low and mean. “Look at that. The boss’s little charity case,” he muttered. “Dances with kids all day, then rides home like she runs the world. Must be easy, being useless when your husband makes everyone bleed for him.”
The driver said nothing, jaw tight.
The man went on, louder now, voice like gravel. “Whole crew hates having to babysit you. You walk around like you’re better than the rest of us — like the name Serenity means something down here. It doesn’t. You’re just another mouth Dom should’ve shut the second you opened it.”
The car stayed silent after that. The only sound was the slow drag of his cigarette and the faint scrape as Gabrielle adjusted her bracelet, eyes fixed on the window, unblinking.