Chapter 1 · Signed Over

The man across the table had already written my name twice.

I hadn't agreed to a damn thing.

Two strokes of a heavy gold pen across thick cream paper. Under the stench of rusted brine and fish guts, my own name stared back at me upside down.

*Mara Kessler.*

Neat, sharp capitals. Like a line item on an invoice.

"That's my name," I said. My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "Why is my name on that?"

Nobody answered.

Six men stood in the shadows of the gutted cannery. Not one of them looked at me. That told me everything. You don't bother avoiding eye contact with someone who gets to walk away.

Two hours ago, I was sitting in my kitchen over cold tea, staring at my brother's second missed call. Then heavy boots hit my stairs. A fist slammed my door. Two men bundled me into the back of a black SUV before I could scream.

Now I was here, pinned behind a steel table bolted straight into the concrete floor.

The man with the pen finally looked up.

He was young. Late twenties, maybe thirty, and that made it worse. Black wool coat, no tie, and a jawline sharp enough to draw blood. He moved with the quiet arrogance of someone who’d never had to run a day in his life.

"Your brother took four million dollars from me," he said. "Eleven days ago. He also took a woman's car, a clean passport, and three years of my good graces."

"Danny wouldn't—"

"Danny did." He spun the paper with one finger. It slid across the cold steel and stopped against my knuckles. "Sign where I flagged it. You're my deposit until he's standing where you are."

I stared at the line. Then at the heavy pen resting beside it, still warm from his grip.

"And if I say no?"

His mouth ticked up at one corner. Not a smile. A warning.

"If you don't sign," he said, "my men find your brother and put a bullet through both his kneecaps. Then I come back for you anyway. Only difference is, you enter my house as an unpaid debt instead of a guest."

He said it like he was ordering an espresso. Flat. Casual. That was the part that made my blood turn to slush.

The single bulb swinging above us cut his face into harsh light and black shadow.

"I don't even know who you are," I whispered.

"Dominic Castellane." He didn't blink. "You can call me Dominic. Or Mr. Castellane. I don't care which, as long as your mouth opens when I speak to you."

I gripped the edge of the steel table. The cold burned through my fingertips.

"Four million dollars," I said, stalling. "Danny doesn't have that kind of money. He can barely cover rent."

"He covered rent off me. For three years, he checked my crates down at the docks. I paid him very well to stay clean." Dominic tapped a manicured nail right under my name. "Eleven days ago, he stopped being clean. Emptied a private account, torched a lockbox, and vanished with my cash."

"So go hunt him down."

"I am. You're going to help."

"I don't know where he went!" The words ripped out of me too fast, too raw. It sounded like panic, and I hated myself for giving him that.

"I know you don't," Dominic said smoothly. "Not yet. But you know his tells. You know his handwriting. You know the rat holes he crawled into when you were kids. And your father—" His gaze dropped slowly, tracking down my throat to where my pulse jumped against my skin, "—kept books for my family for twenty years. Double-entry ciphers. Number strings nobody else can read. I'm told you know the code."

My chest seized.

"Who told you that?"

"Doesn't matter. What matters is I have a ledger I can't read, a runner I can't catch, and a girl sitting right here who solves both problems." He pushed the pen another half-inch forward. "Ninety days. You crack what your father left behind, you help me reel Danny in, and this contract gets burned the second he's in front of me."

"And if I can't crack it? If I can't read them?"

"Then you're collateral on a four-million-dollar loss with no way to pay it back." He let the silence stretch until I couldn't breathe. "I'd make yourself useful, Mara."

My fingers trembled as I picked up the pen.

I froze at the bottom line. I looked up, meeting those slate-gray eyes, refusing to look down like a dog.

"This isn't legal," I said. "You can't hold me."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't."

"The second I walk out that door, I go to the police."

Dominic leaned in. Close enough that the scent of cedar and cold rain off his wool coat drowned out the rotting fish. Close enough that I could see the flecks of dark gold in his irises.

"You aren't walking out to the street, sweetheart. You aren't going back to your little studio. Not tonight. Not for ninety days."

"You can't just steal someone's life!"

"I can claim what's owed to me." He pointed at the dotted line. "Sign. Now."

I looked around the room. Five armed men watching the exits. One monster sitting three inches from my face. Nobody was coming through that door to save me.

I pressed the nib to the paper.

The ink dragged. I scrawled my first name, fighting my own hand, then slashed my last name crooked beneath his.

Dominic took the pen right out of my fingers. His skin brushed mine, searing hot against my frozen knuckles. He clicked the cap shut.

*Click.*

It sounded like a cell door slamming shut.

"Good girl," he murmured, sliding the signed sheet into his inner coat pocket. He stood, towering over the table, and buttoned his jacket.

"Wait—" I pushed my chair back. "My things. My apartment. My cat—"

"Handled." Dominic reached down and clamped his hand around my wrist. His grip was broad, heavy, and unbreakable. "Locks are already changed. Lease is broken. By the time we hit the car, Mara, your front door doesn't exist anymore."

He pulled me out of the chair in one sharp tug, dragging me flush against his chest.

"Move."