They sold me to a monster to save their real daughter. Fine. Let the monster find out whose blood is running in his veins. They think they're chaining a killer tonight. They just welded themselves into the collar. The car stopped at the gates of the Moretti estate at 11:47 p.m. I know the exact minute because I'd been counting down to it for three years. My adoptive father shoved me out onto the gravel in a white dress that wasn't mine. Serena's dress. Serena's shoes, two sizes too small. Serena's perfume sprayed on my throat so I'd smell like a real Ashford daughter instead of the charity case they'd kept in the east wing like a stray dog. "Remember," Gregor Ashford hissed, gripping my arm hard enough to bruise. "You're a nobody. You beg. You cry. You let him take his payment, and maybe the family survives the night." Behind him, Serena leaned out of the car window in silk, glowing, untouched. "Try not to scream too loud, Elena," she said sweetly. "They say Dario Moretti cuts the pretty ones first. Lucky you." I looked at the dirt. I let my shoulders shake. Twenty-four years of playing the broken thing they wanted—what was one more night? The doors of the estate opened, and forty men in black spilled down the steps like oil. Then he came out. Dario Moretti. Thirty years old. King of the eastern half of the city. The man three separate governments couldn't put in a grave. He didn't walk like a man who owned the place; he walked like a man who could burn it down and rebuild it before breakfast. "The Ashford house sold me to my enemies three years ago," he said. His voice was low, unhurried, and every man in that courtyard went still. "Eleven of my people died in that ambush. The Code says a life is paid with a life." Gregor pushed me forward so fast I hit the gravel on my knees. "Take her," he said. "She's not blood. She's adopted. But she's a daughter of my house, and the Code doesn't care which one." There it was. The great Ashford love, in one sentence. Dario's eyes came down to me. Dark. Flat. Bored, almost—the way a man looks at paperwork. He didn't recognize me. Of course he didn't. Three years ago he was bleeding out on a steel table with his eyes rolled back, and I was a mask, a pair of gloves, and a bag of my own blood. The blood no lab in this country has ever catalogued. The blood that saved him. "Stand her up," he said. Two men hauled me to my feet. And that's when Aunt Ivana decided to perform. She stepped out of the car, all pearls and outrage, and struck me across the face to prove to Dario Moretti that the Ashfords were properly ashamed of their trash. Her ring caught my cheekbone and opened it. Warmth ran down to my jaw. "Filthy little liar," she spat. "Show the Don some respect—" She never finished. Because Dario Moretti made a sound I don't think anyone in that courtyard had heard before. He staggered. The King of the city took one step back, hand flying to his own face—and when he lowered it, his fingers were red. A cut had opened on his cheekbone. Same place. Same length. Same second. Forty men stopped breathing at once. Ivana's hand was still raised, frozen in the air like a bad photograph. Gregor made a small choking noise. Serena's window went up so fast it nearly took her fingers off. I stood there with blood on my jaw and something ugly and beautiful unfolding in my chest. Hello again, Don Moretti. Miss me? Dario looked at his red fingertips. Then at my face. Then at Ivana—and every man in the courtyard drew a gun on her without being told. He crossed the gravel in four steps. He didn't touch me. He just stopped close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, close enough that I saw his pupils blow wide with a pain that wasn't his. "What," he said softly, "did you just do to me?"