Chapter 1

Linnea's POV

Three years ago, I took a bullet for Damon Kingsley. It came within half an inch of my heart.

He looked me in the eyes, his own red, and swore he'd love me for the rest of his life. So I married into this century-old Italian-American Mafia dynasty.

But on our wedding night, the moment he touched me, he convulsed, coughed up blood, and collapsed.

The second time, an old condition flared up and kept him flat on his back for a month.

The third time, he nearly bled out.

Every time after that, the same thing.

The whole family called me a curse. Marked. Bad luck. The kind of woman who brings death to whoever gets close.

The Godmother gave me an ultimatum: get pregnant within a month, or sign the divorce papers and be shipped off to Chicago to marry the devil himself.

I was carrying a fertility tonic to his study, ready to beg him one more time, when I heard voices through the door.

"Mr. Kingsley, please, you gotta stop." One of his guys sounded desperate. "Every time you don't wanna go near her, you shoot yourself up with that stuff. You're gonna kill yourself."

Damon was quiet for a long moment. Then, calm and flat: "Aurora is the only woman I love. I'd take the pain any day over touching her."

All this time, while the whole family called me a curse, the one who actually put it on me was the man I almost died for.

Damon Kingsley. After today, we're done. In this life or the next, don't ever cross my path again.

—

"But boss..." One of his guys goes quiet, voice dropping like he can't bring himself to say it. "She really loves you, boss. You know that, right?"

"Shut up."

Damon sits on the couch, slowly turning the syringe between his fingers. His face gives nothing away. Just cold. Dark. Still.

"Love?" A short, humorless laugh. "A woman like her doesn't get to talk about love. The only reason I married her was because my mother held the succession over my head, and she took a bullet for me. That's it. Every time I see her throwing herself at me like that, it makes me sick."

"No woman except Aurora will ever carry my child. Any other woman who touches me makes my skin crawl. As far as I'm concerned, Linnea Hayes is nothing. She blocked a bullet. That's the only thing she's ever been good for."

Something in my head just stops. Like I've been struck by lightning.

A few hours ago I was on my knees in the meeting room while the family elders took turns tearing into me. Cursed. Marked. A walking curse.

I knelt there and tried to find words, but my throat wouldn't cooperate.

What was I supposed to say? That every time he got near me he'd convulse and bleed? That I wanted a child more than anything, but that man wouldn't even touch me?

It was Damon's mother, the Godmother, who finally ended it. "Linnea, this family has taken care of you for three years. Whatever you were owed for that bullet, consider the debt settled. We don't carry dead weight. I'll say this once: if you're not pregnant within a month, you sign the papers and go to Chicago. Knox Steele needs someone for an alliance. You'll do."

Knox Steele. Chicago's most feared man. Cold, ruthless, the kind who kills clean and never looks back. Being sent to him wouldn't be an escape. It'd just be a different kind of hell.

I came to his study with this tonic because I was willing to beg. Give me a child. Give me a way out.

But the bottle is still warm in my hands, and my heart has gone completely cold.

Aurora Marsh.

His dead brother's widow. Always so fragile. Always playing the victim. The woman he never got over.

Three years. Three years beside him, and I was never anything more than someone he could step on when it suited him. Every convulsion, every bloody episode, all that suffering he put himself through. It was never bad luck. It was never me. He was poisoning himself so he'd never have to touch me. And the whole time everyone in this family was calling me a curse, he was the one casting it.

I press my back against the wall and try to breathe.

My hand goes to my chest without thinking, right over the scar from that bullet. It feels like it's tearing open all over again.

Tears fall onto the back of my hand. I straighten up slowly.

Three years of hope, all of it drains out of me.

You think I disgust you. Fine. Keep all that love for Aurora Marsh.

But Damon Kingsley, three years of this ends right now.

I turn and walk away, slipping into the dark at the end of the hall without a sound.

I pour the tonic down the drain. Along with the last of whatever I still felt for him.

At eleven that night, Damon pushes open the bedroom door.

The overhead light is off. Just the faint glow from the lamp by the bed.

I'm sitting on the edge of the mattress in my nightgown, completely still.

Any other night, I'd have heard his footsteps and already been on my feet. Going to him. Taking his jacket. Asking how his night went.

Tonight, I don't move.

He hesitates, just for a beat. Then that familiar expression settles back onto his face, warm and soft and practiced.

He crosses the room and takes my cold fingers in his hand, voice low and careful. "Linnea, I'm sorry about what happened tonight. I'll handle my mother. Tonight... I know I can. Let's try for a baby. What do you say?"