Chapter 1 - THE CAGE OF BLACK SILK
The silence in the grand bedroom was heavy enough to taste. My lungs refused to expand properly as the word fiancée hung in the crisp morning air like a loaded weapon. I sat frozen under the slate-gray blanket, my hand trapped tightly inside Damon Castellano's grip.
Around us, the room had shifted from high-end luxury into a war zone. The older woman leaning on her silver-topped cane—whom I vaguely recognized from Boston’s philanthropic registry as Elena Castellano, the matriarch of the family—stopped smiling. Her sharp eyes cut from Damon’s face to mine, measuring me as if calculating how much I was worth or how deep she should dig my grave.
"A fiancée," Elena repeated, her voice dripping with an icy, aristocratic disbelief that could freeze a glass of water at ten paces. "You expect us to believe that you found your bride among the event staff, Damon?"
"I don't expect you to believe anything, Mother," Damon replied, his baritone voice dangerously level. He didn't let go of my hand. If anything, his grip tightened, a silent anchor in a storm that was threatening to tear me apart. "I stated a fact. Vivian is under my protection. And she is my fiancée."
The fourth man in the doorway—the pale guard who had burst in shouting in Italian—swallowed hard. "Boss, the North End delegation is downstairs. They heard the rumors before sunrise. They’re demanding to see who you brought into the Ravenscourt wing."
"Let them look," Damon said coldly. He threw back the slate-gray blanket before I could protest, exposing the expanse of his scarred, muscular chest and the intricate wolf tattoo wrapping around his forearm. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, standing tall and imposing.
He was still wearing his dark trousers from the night before, while I was entirely trapped in his oversized black dress shirt, my bare legs completely exposed. The humiliation was searing, but there was no time to process it. Damon reached down, grabbed a silk robe from the foot of the bed, and tossed it over my shoulders.
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"Get dressed," he murmured to me, his gaze softening by a fraction—just enough for me to see the calculated intelligence burning behind those pale gray eyes. "When you step out of those doors, you are Vivian Castellano. Do not look down, do not apologize, and let me do the talking."
Before I could breathe, before I could ask what kind of monstrous syndicate trap I had just accidentally wandered into by falling asleep for five minutes, Damon turned and walked toward the double doors, stepping out to face his family and his enemies alike.
