Chapter 1

The crash echoed through my apartment like a gunshot, splintering wood and jolting me upright in bed. It was barely dawn, the kind of gray December morning where the world outside my window looked frozen and unforgiving. My heart slammed against my ribs as I scrambled for my robe, but before I could even tie the sash, they were inside.

Two men, built like refrigerators with faces scarred from too many bad decisions, stood in my living room. The door hung off its hinges behind them, snowflakes swirling in from the hallway. One of them, the shorter one with a tattoo creeping up his neck like a venomous vine, held a crowbar loosely in his gloved hand. The other, taller and meaner-looking, cracked his knuckles and scanned the room as if appraising what he could smash next.

“Where’s the money, sweetheart?” the tattooed one growled, his breath fogging the air. He had an accent, thick and Eastern European, the kind that made every word sound like a threat.

I froze in the bedroom doorway, clutching my robe closed. My mind raced, Mom’s debt. The gambling loans she’d hidden from me until the cancer took her eight months ago. I’d been scraping by, paying what I could, but the interest piled up like the snow outside. “I… I don’t have it yet. Please, I just need more time.”

The taller one laughed, a sound like gravel under boots. He stepped forward, close enough that I could smell the stale coffee on his breath. “Time’s up. Your mama owed us one-eighty-seven grand plus change. That’s on you now. We ain’t charities.”

They weren’t wrong. The paperwork had come after the funeral, stacks of it, from underground bookies who’d fronted her bets on everything from horse races to poker games. She’d sworn it was under control, right up until the end. But here I was, twenty-five and alone, inheriting her mess.

I backed up a step, my bare feet cold on the linoleum. “Look, I can get it. Just give me a month. I’ll sell the house if I have to, Mom’s old place. It’s worth something. Please, a month to sort it out.”

The tattooed one exchanged a glance with his partner, then smirked. He swung the crowbar lightly, tapping it against a lamp on my side table. The bulb flickered. “A month? You think we’re idiots? We gave your ma extensions. Look where that got her.” He leaned in, his eyes narrowing. “One week. Seven days. Wire the full amount, $187,400.17, or we come back. And next time, we don’t just break doors.”

The taller one grabbed a framed photo from the mantel, me and Mom at the lake house years ago, both smiling like life was simple. He smashed it against the wall, glass shattering across the floor. “That’s a preview. You pay, or we take everything. Starting with you.”

My stomach twisted. I nodded frantically, not trusting my voice. They turned and lumbered out, leaving the door gaping open like a wound. I sank to the floor amid the shards, my hands shaking as I swept them away. Blood welled up from a cut on my palm, but I barely felt it. One week. Seven days to come up with nearly two hundred thousand dollars, or lose everything, including, apparently, my safety.

I bandaged my hand with a kitchen towel and grabbed my phone. First, the bank. I dialed the loan officer who’d turned me down twice already. “Miss Voss,” she said, her voice clipped and professional, “your credit score is in the tank from the medical bills. We can’t approve another line without collateral, and the house is already mortgaged to the hilt.”

Next, Aunt Clara, Mom’s sister, the one who’d barely spoken to us since the divorce. “Ivy, honey, I’m sorry,” she said over the line, her voice tinny from her Florida condo. “We’re on a fixed income. Maybe a few hundred, but that’s it. Your mom… she burned a lot of bridges with her habits.”

I tried friends next. Sarah from college, who worked in finance now. “God, Ivy, that’s insane. I wish I could help, but we’re saving for the wedding. Have you tried crowdfunding? Or a second job?”

A second job. As if waitressing nights and freelancing graphic design during the day hadn’t already stretched me thin. I scrolled through my contacts, desperation mounting. Old bosses, distant cousins, even an ex-boyfriend who’d ghosted me last year. No one had the kind of money I needed. No one could move that fast.

The snow was picking up outside, blanketing the city in white silence. I paced the apartment, my mind a whirlwind. Sell the house? It was the only thing left of Mom, the creaky Victorian where I’d grown up, filled with her laughter and her secrets. But even if I listed it today, closings took months. Pawn shops? I had nothing valuable. Rob a bank? The thought crossed my mind in a hysterical flash, but I shoved it away.

My thumb hovered over the last name in my contacts: Cassian Voss. Stepdad. Or ex-stepdad, depending on how you counted the years. Mom had married him when I was ten, a whirlwind romance with the charming billionaire who’d swept her off her feet. For eight years, he’d been the father figure I’d never had, teaching me to swim in the lake behind his mansion, funding my art classes, even showing up to my high school graduation with a bouquet bigger than my head.

But then the cheating scandals hit. Mom found out about the affairs, models, assistants, women half her age. She’d kicked him out, divorced him clean, and forbade me from ever contacting him again. “He’s a bastard, Ivy,” she’d said through tears, her voice raw. “A manipulative snake who uses people like toys. Promise me you’ll stay away. He’s poison.”

I’d promised. And for six years, I had. No calls, no emails, nothing. But I knew things about Cassian that Mom had tried to erase. He was filthy rich, tech empires, real estate, investments that made headlines. Two hundred grand was pocket change to him, a rounding error in his bank account. If anyone could wire the money today, it was him.

I stared at his number, my cut hand throbbing. The goons’ threats echoed in my ears: Starting with you. I had no choice. My finger trembled as I hit call.

It rang twice before he answered. “Ivy.” His voice was deep, smooth as aged whiskey, with that faint trace of an accent from his European roots. No surprise, no warmth, just my name, like he’d been expecting me.

“Cassian,” I said, my throat dry. “I… I need help.”

A pause, long enough to make me regret everything. Then, softly: “Tell me.”

I spilled it all, the debt, Mom’s gambling, the men at my door, the smashed photo, the one-week deadline. Words tumbled out, raw and unfiltered, until I was breathless.

He listened without interrupting. When I finished, there was another silence. I could picture him in his penthouse or that sprawling lake house up north, surrounded by leather and glass, untouched by the chaos of ordinary lives.

“You’re still my daughter, Ivy,” he said finally, his tone shifting to something almost paternal. Almost. “I will give you that money. All of it, wired by end of day.”

Relief crashed over me like a wave, making my knees buckle. I slid down the wall to the floor. “Thank you. God, thank you. I’ll pay you back, I swear—”

“But in conditions,” he cut in, voice suddenly darker, slower, the way it used to drop when he caught me lying about where I’d been at seventeen.

I swallowed hard. “What kind of conditions?”

A low chuckle that curled straight through my ribs. “Come to the lake house tomorrow night.”

My pulse thundered in my ears. “Cassian—”

“Say yes, Ivy,” he murmured, soft and lethal. “Say yes, and by tomorrow morning the debt is gone and those men disappear forever. Say no… and in six days they come back to finish what they started tonight.”

The line went dead.

I sat frozen on the cold floor, phone still pressed to my ear, snow blowing through the broken door and melting on my skin.

Tomorrow night I would drive six hours north, straight into the house where he once carried me on his shoulders and taught me to skate on the frozen lake.

Straight into the arms of the man my mother swore would ruin me.

And for the first time in six years, I wasn’t sure she was wrong.

But I was sure of one thing: I was going.

Because I had no one else.

I stood up, grabbed my keys, and started packing.

The storm was waiting.

So was he.