Chapter One
Kat
Every girl dreams about it.
Every woman plans it.
The white dress.
The pretty flowers.
The handsome man waiting at the altar.
And that is the most important part.
The guy. The one you want to spend the rest of your life with. The one that will cherish you, love you, protect you and make you feel like they would move heaven and earth to make you happy.
Yeah. That guy.
Except, I’m not marrying that guy.
Instead, I’m stood next to the devil with a fake smile plastered on my face.
I’m wearing the dress and I have the pretty flowers, but that’s as far as it goes. The rest has all been fabricated.
You see, I’m stood here because of a debt. A debt I stupidly thought I could repay with money, but no. Instead, I’m paying with my life, and it’s all my fault.
I lost and gambled away my own future.
Crazy, huh?
That it may be, but it’s happened and here I am.
I’m not marrying the man I love; I’m marrying the most dangerous guy in the country.
Nate Knowles.
Number one asshole and blackmail extraordinaire.
I had a debt with the most powerful man in the crime world, and I truly believed that I could have paid him back… until I didn’t.
One wrong choice was my downfall.
And that choice I made was for love. A love that turned out to be false. The man I thought I loved turned his back on me and left me to rot.
And now, here I am.
Bowing down to the crime lord where his world involves popping a bullet in someone’s head as if it is as normal as eating breakfast.
Playing ball is what will keep me alive.
Acting the part is what will stop me from being fifty feet under.
So, even as I hate Nate Knowles with a passion, I will smile and say the right things in public, but in private, all bets are off.
I need a plan, a way to get the hell out of this nightmare.
I need to suss things out, ingrain myself so deep that he will never see it coming.
