Chapter 1 DEBT
The dead didn’t send text messages. Except hers just had.
De Luca Industries. 9AM. Floor 60. Don’t be late. A_
Mia Caruso stared at her phone until her coffee went cold and a skin formed on top. She didn’t know anyone named A. She didn’t know anyone at De Luca Industries, period. Unless she counted the billboard of Alessandro De Luca she passed every morning on her way to Grind & Go — billionaire CEO, youngest self-made on Forbes, face cut from marble and sin, looking down at Queens like it personally offended him.
Her boss, Rosa, would fire her if she was late again. Rent was due in three days and she was $430 short, with exactly $11.43 in her checking account and a tip jar that had yielded two quarters and a button yesterday. But the text included her full name. Mia Caruso. No one called her Caruso anymore. Not since her dad died. Not since the funeral home handed her a sealed casket and a bill she couldn’t pay.
She should delete it. Block the number. Go pour lattes for people who tipped in Instagram follows.
Instead, she found herself on the Q train at 8:22AM, in her only clean blouse, the one with the fraying cuff she kept tugging down.
The De Luca building was sixty floors of glass and steel and money that smelled like violence and window cleaner. The lobby was all white marble, silent except for the hum of air conditioning that cost more than her rent. The receptionist didn’t even ask her name. She just looked up, gave Mia a once-over that lasted half a second too long, and pointed to a private elevator tucked behind a wall of living moss. “He’s expecting you, Miss Caruso.”
He.
Mia’s stomach dropped to her shoes.
The elevator opened on floor 60 to silence so complete it hurt her ears. No assistant, no secretary, no clicking keyboards or phones ringing. Just a wall of windows and a man standing with his back to her, looking down at the city like he owned it. He probably did.
She smelled him before she saw his face. Pine. Smoke. Something wild and clean, like snow that had never been touched. It crawled into her lungs and sat there.
“You’re three minutes late.”
His voice didn’t raise. It didn’t have to. It moved under her skin anyway, low and certain, the kind of voice that didn’t ask twice.
Alessandro De Luca turned.
The billboards didn’t do him justice. They got the cheekbones, the mouth that looked like it had never smiled for free. They missed the rest. He was taller, broader, dressed in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than her yearly salary before taxes. His tie was black, his shirt white, no wasted color on him anywhere except his eyes.
They were gold. Not hazel. Not brown. Gold, like a wolf’s. Like the ones in her nightmares.
And they were fixed on her like she was prey that had wandered into his territory.
“I think you have the wrong person,” she said. Her voice shook. She hated that it shook. She clasped her hands behind her back to hide it. “I don’t know you.”
“No.” He stepped around a desk bigger than her entire apartment. It was glass and steel, empty except for a single black folder and a pen that looked like it could double as a weapon. “But I knew your father. Marco Caruso.”
The air left her lungs like she’d been punched. Her dad had been dead six months. Car crash, the police said. Closed casket. She hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye. Just a police report and a priest who kept calling her Maria.
“He borrowed money from me,” Alex continued. He said it like he was commenting on the weather, like it’s cloudy today and your dead father owes me millions,were the same level of news.
“Four million dollars. Twenty years ago.”
Mia laughed. It came out broken, too high. “That’s not possible. My dad was a mechanic. We lived in a two-bedroom in Queens. We clipped coupons. He drove a ‘98 Civic that died every time it rained.”
“Your father was Beta to the Volkova Pack before he ran.” Alex slid the black folder across the desk. It stopped exactly in front of her. Not an inch too far. Not an inch too short. “He used my money to disappear. And to suppress your wolf.”
Her wolf. The word made something in her chest snarl, something she’d been ignoring for months. The nightmares,teeth, blood, running through forests she’d never seen with feet that weren’t human. The panic attacks that came at 3AM and left her on the bathroom floor, nails digging into tile, mouth full of the taste of copper. Panic attacks, her therapist had called them. Stress-induced.
“Open it.”
She didn’t want to. Her fingers felt numb. But she did, because not knowing was worse than knowing.
Inside was a contract. Yellowed, the paper thick and expensive. Signed in ink that was too dark, too brown to be ink. Marco Caruso in shaky letters she recognized. Her dad’s handwriting, from the birthday cards he left on the kitchen table every year. At the bottom, a clause highlighted in red:
In the event of default by death, debt transfers to next of kin. Payable in full, in cash, or by marriage into the De Luca line.
The words didn’t make sense. They were English, but they didn’t make sense.
“In cash,” she whispered, because saying it out loud might make it real, “or marriage.”
“You have thirty days.” Alex was in front of her now. She hadn’t seen him move. One second he was by the desk, the next he was there, close enough that she had to tip her head back to see his face. He smelled like pine and smoke and something wild that made her knees want to give out. “Four million dollars, Mia. Or you become my wife.”
“This is insane. This can’t be legal.” The words sounded weak, even to her.
His mouth curved. It wasn’t a smile. It was the thing a predator did before it bit. “Legal is a word for people who don’t have their own judges.”
He was close enough that she saw the ring on his finger, not gold, but black, with a crest carved into it: a wolf’s head over crossed knives. Bratva. Mafia. The rumors on the news, the ones she’d scrolled past because billionaires were always rumored to be something, were true.
“I don’t have four million dollars,” she said. Her voice was steadier now, anger burning through the fear. “I don’t have four thousand. I have eleven dollars and an overdue library book.”
“I know.” His knuckles grazed her jaw. She flinched, but not from fear. From the jolt that went straight through her, from her jaw to her spine to places that had no business reacting to a stranger. His eyes darkened, gold going molten. “Which leaves us one option.”
She stepped back. Hit the desk. Trapped. “Why? Why would you want to marry me? You don’t even know me. You don’t like me. You’re looking at me like I’m a problem you have to solve.”
He leaned down. His breath was hot against her ear, and she hated that she noticed. Hated that she catalogued it. “Oh, little wolf. I’ve known you since you turned eighteen. I’ve had men on you for five years.”
Five years. Since her dad started getting paranoid. Since they’d moved three times in one year, since he started checking the locks twice, since he told her to never, ever go into Central Park after dark.
“Why?” she breathed. The word came out smaller than she wanted.
“Because you smell like mine.” His teeth grazed her earlobe, not breaking skin. A promise. A threat. The touch sent a shock down her body that wasn’t fear and wasn’t not fear. “And hybrids like me don’t get fated mates. Except apparently, we do.”
Hybrids. Mates. Words from bad paperbacks Rosa kept behind the counter. Words that weren’t real.
“You’re lying,” Mia said. But her heart was beating too fast, and there was a pressure in her chest like something was trying to get out.
“Am I?” He pulled back enough to meet her eyes. “Then why did your heart rate just spike to 110? Why did your pupils dilate? Why can I smell vanilla and storm all over you when you’re scared?”
She couldn’t answer. Because he was right. Because she could smell him too, under the cologne and the expensive soap. Something wild. Something that called to the part of her that dreamed of teeth.
“You have thirty days, Mia.” He stepped back, all business again, the moment gone like it had never happened. Like he hadn’t just dismantled her with a sentence. “Tick tock.”
The elevator dinged behind her. Dismissed.
She ran for it, contract crushed in her fist, her breath coming too fast. She made it inside before she turned around. She shouldn’t have.
He was watching her. Gold eyes, predator still, hands in his pockets like he had all the time in the world. Like he already knew how it ended.
“One more thing,” he said, as the doors started to close.
“What?” She hated that she asked.
He smiled for real this time. It was terrifying. It was beautiful. It was the last thing she saw before the doors sealed shut.
“You run, I’ll chase. And I always catch what’s mine.