Chapter 2

Sienna POV

Five years later

"Chin up. Eyes on the camera."

The flash went off. I stared blankly into the lens, the booking placard in both hands.

The officer wrote a few lines on his form and looked up. "Name?"

"Sienna Hart."

"Age?"

"Twenty-five."

"Ever been arrested?"

"No."

"Aliases?"

I hesitated a second. "No."

It should have been easy. But in ten years I'd used so many names and identities I barely knew which life counted as mine anymore.

Tonight I had one name.

Prisoner.

He pressed each finger onto the print card, then handed me a clear plastic bag for my things. Phone, keys, twenty-three dollars, half a tube of lipstick--and the old silver ring my grandmother had given me. I looked at it, then put it in with the rest.

"Step back."

The steel door shut behind me, the clang ringing down the narrow corridor.

This wasn't a job. I was in jail.

Eight days ago I had thought it would be a few inconvenient days in holding. Now my lawyer was telling me the other side refused to settle, refused compensation, and if they filed I was looking at five years minimum.

I leaned against the cold wall, closed my eyes, and that night came back anyway.

The job was done and I was walking back alone down the alley when a man came out of the dark and slammed me into a wall. My spine hit concrete, my wrists were pinned, and nothing I did slowed him. My hand found an empty bottle against the wall; I didn't think, I grabbed it and swung.

He went down, blood spreading under his head. Once I was sure he wasn't getting back up, I walked away.

I thought it was self-defense. But the next morning the police showed up at my door, and I learned he was a councilman's nephew. With his family's money, connections and lawyers behind them, the story was turned against me. There would be no mediation, no compensation. They wanted me behind bars.

Eight days in holding, and almost nobody came. Then on the eighth night a guard called my name.

"Sienna Hart. You've got a visitor."

My first thought was Victor Kane. If anyone had the reach to pull me out of here, it should be him.

But in the visiting room, seeing the man on the other side of the glass, I knew I had guessed wrong.

Fox. A fixer with a reputation. I had taken a few jobs through him. He sat there with his usual smile, the one that set my teeth on edge.

"Chica. Couple of days inside. How's it treating you?"

I only looked at him.

He dug out a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers. "That case is going through. If they file, you're looking at five years, minimum." He said it like it was nothing. "And after that? You've been out of the life too long. Nobody's going to take you back, not when they've got younger hands to choose from."

I had been out of the life five years already: after the Hawthorne theft, Victor handed me a laughable cut and shipped me abroad to let the heat die, then stopped sending work. Grandma's illness didn't wait for anyone, so I took small contracts--and the first one back home put me in here.

The smile thinned when I didn't rise to it. "You're thinking your famous foster father Victor will get you out sooner or later. Aren't you?"

My fingers curled into a fist.

Fox pulled out his phone and turned up a photograph. A gun, blood spattered across the grip and the scrollwork. I recognized it--Victor's favorite, the one he never went anywhere without.

"I'd give that up. one weeks ago there was a shootout. Blackwood lost some of its core people and lost ground with them. You were loyal to Blackwood. Look how they've repaid you."

"Where's Victor?"

Fox smiled. "Ran, chica. And I'll say it plainly--Victor never had any loyalty in him. Funny thing is, he didn't leave a single one of his mistresses behind when he ran. But you, his foster daughter..."

My hand tightened until the knuckles ached.

The man who had controlled my life since I was fourteen. Who held grandma over me, tied me down with debts, told me I couldn't survive without Blackwood. When things went bad he ran first, and hadn't even thought to take me with him. All those years I bled for him, and in the end I wasn't worth the risk of a seat in the car.

"You're still waiting for Victor to save you?"

"You didn't come all this way just to tell me that."

"Smart."

He swiped to another photograph. A man standing at a floor-to-ceiling window with the whole city lit up behind him, the black suit drawing his shoulders straight.

Luca Hawthorne.

Five years, and I had thought I had forgotten his face.

"Ring a bell?" Fox asked.

I was quiet for a moment. "It does."

"Then we save some time. Someone wants you to get close to him again."

My eyes went back to Luca. Under everything else, I had guessed the answer.

"Who?"

"Luca's fiancée. Evelyn Moretti, the youngest Moretti daughter. She needs a reason good enough to make her father cancel the engagement."

"She wants me? The woman who conned her fiancé? She has good taste."

"She wants you 'because’ you conned him. He might fall for it again." He looked at me. "You know him. You know what he responds to. You got him five years ago--why not now? She'll make this case disappear. Seven million when it's done."

Seven million. On what freelance work paid me, I would have been eighty before I saw that kind of money.

"Well, chica? I've told you before--you should go independent. Blackwood squeezed you dry."

I let out a breath. He wasn't wrong. Since Victor pulled me into Blackwood at fifteen I had tried to leave more than once, and every time he used grandma against me. He had even quoted me a price to buy myself free: five million.

Seven million would cover grandma's medicine for years and buy me out of Blackwood besides. If things were as Fox described them, this was the only lifeline within reach.

But if Luca found out I was alive, what would he do?

"I'll think about it."

"Chica, I don't think you understand the situation." He leaned back. "You can afford to think? Five years--you can last that? You could die quiet the first year and get dumped wherever suits them."

I closed my eyes. If I went away for five years, would grandma still be there when I came out? My own life might not be worth much. Hers wasn't negotiable.

What Evelyn Moretti wanted was simple enough: see Luca Hawthorne once more, take a few photographs, get something on record, hand it over. I had done things a hundred times more dangerous, and I had no choice.

I opened my eyes and breathed in.

"Tell your client," I said, lifting my head, "I'll take it."