She brokers peace between killers like me, her neutrality a blade sharper than any switchblade.
Untouchable.
Impartial.
Until I made her choose: marry the monster or watch her world bleed out.
I gave her the ultimatum in a warehouse reeking of gun oil, whiskey glass shaking in her grip as my hand closed around her wrist.
That tremor? It wasn't fear.
It was the crack in her armor, the hunger she's starved for under all that defiant steel.
She's the one woman who could save me from my own shadows, trading her sacred impartiality for my ring, my bed, my unrelenting claim.
But surrender doesn't come easy to her.
Not when every thrust against cold concrete leaves us slick and gasping, limbs locked in a vault's suffocating heat where alliances shatter and obsession takes root.
I pin her down, devour her resistance, taste the vulnerability she hides from everyone else.
Her family loyalties pull one way, her craving for my dominance the other.
She fights it, teeth gritted, body arching into mine like it's the only truth left.
This marriage was strategy, a shield against the crossfire.
But now? Her moans echo my name in the dark, and I'm the fool unraveling at her touch, clumsy with the tenderness I never knew I had.
One wrong move, and her neutrality crumbles, her kin turns on us, my empire drags us both under.
She's mine to protect, to ruin, to worship in the wreckage.
Vital.
Catastrophic.
The question devouring me: will she yield completely before the mob's shadows swallow us whole?
