CHAPTER 3

Roxanne's POV

The transition from the freezing, garbage-strewn pavement of an alleyway to absolute warmth was jarring enough to pull me back from the edge of unconsciousness.

My eyelids flickered open, heavy and coated in grit. Instead of the damp concrete and the steady drumming of rain, I was staring up at a coffered ceiling made of dark mahogany wood. The scent wrapping around me wasn't the familiar stench of industrial bleach or rotting city trash; it was expensive—a sharp, crisp blend of crushed cedarwood, dark tobacco, and clean rain.

I tried to shift my weight, but my limbs felt like lead weights tied to my bones. A sharp pinch in the crook of my right arm made me hiss. I looked down and saw a clear intravenous line taped neatly to my skin, hooked to a saline bag suspended on a chrome pole beside a floor-to-ceiling glass wall.

"I wouldn't pull that out if I were you," a deep, gravelly voice cut through the quiet room like a scalpel.

My head snapped toward the sound, a fresh wave of panic spiking my adrenaline.

Sitting behind a massive, minimalist glass desk on the other side of the expansive, high-rise office was a man. He was leaning back in a high-backed leather chair, the glow of twin computer monitors illuminating the sharp, unforgiving planes of his face. He wasn't wearing a standard corporate suit; instead, his black dress shirt had the top two buttons undone, revealing the pale, sharp line of his throat and a faint, jagged scar disappearing beneath the dark fabric.

Kiran Cross.

Even sitting down, he radiated an effortless, predatory authority that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Everyone in the city’s legal and criminal underworld knew that name—and whispered it with a mix of awe and absolute terror. Kiran wasn't just a high-profile criminal defense attorney or an elite corporate fixer; he was the man untouchable billionaires hired when they wanted evidence to magically vanish, witnesses to recant, and entire murder investigations swept under the rug.

"Waking up faster than anticipated," Kiran murmured, his dark eyes sliding away from his glowing screens to lock directly onto mine. "Most people who spend four hours freezing in a downtown drainage alley take twice as long to clear the toxins and shock out of their system. But then again, a crime scene cleaner builds up a certain tolerance for filth and cold, doesn't she, Ms. Rook?"

My breath hitched. My hands immediately flew to my jacket pockets, frantically patting down the wet fabric.

Empty.

"Looking for this?" Kiran asked smoothly.

With a slow, deliberate movement, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small, familiar object. The black USB drive caught the amber glow of the desk lamp. My master security backup. The digital insurance policy that proved Ethan’s death was an assassination orchestrated by the city’s most elite dynasty.

"How..." My voice came out as a dry, cracked rasp, sounding like sandpaper scraping across stone. I swallowed hard, trying to force moisture down my throat. "How did you find me?"

"You left a trail of muddy boot prints and a very distinct chemical residue from a specialized bio-hazard brand that only three contractors in the district use," Kiran replied, standing up from his chair. He walked around the glass desk with a slow, feline grace, his posture completely relaxed yet coiled with lethal precision. "And more importantly, my night-shift security team happened to be clearing out a perimeter two blocks away from Crimson Heights when you collapsed right outside my private office building. Fate has a very ironic sense of humor, Roxy."

He stopped a few feet away from the plush leather sofa where I was lying, looking down at me with an expression that was entirely unreadable. There was no pity in his eyes, no warmth, and certainly no sign of a rescue mission born out of charity. Kiran Cross did nothing without calculating the exact return on investment.

"You're bleeding from a laceration on your knee, you're shivering under three thermal blankets, and the city police, along with Victoria Sterling’s private cleanup squad, currently have every major intersection blockaded looking for a missing cleaner who happened to be inside the penthouse when Ethan Vance was executed," Kiran said, ticking off the details on his fingers with chilling detachment. "If I call the authorities right now, or hand you over to the Sterling family's security detail, they will pay a very generous bounty. You'll be found floating in the harbor by sunrise, wrapped in a neat little ruling of accidental drowning."

My stomach plummeted into a bottomless void. Every instinct I possessed screamed that this man was dangerous—far more dangerous than the hired guns in the penthouse. But deep beneath the terror, a cold, hard ember of survival sparked to life. I didn't flinch away from his gaze; instead, I forced my aching body to shift upward, leaning against the back of the sofa, meeting his dark eyes dead-on.

"If you were going to hand me over to them, Cross, you wouldn't have bothered putting an IV in my arm or keeping me in your private quarters," I said, my voice steadying despite the ragged edge in my chest. "You would have dumped my body back in the alley before my core temperature even dropped."

A slow, dangerous smile touched the corner of Kiran’s lips. It didn't reach his eyes, but it transformed his face from a cold statue into something terrifyingly alive.

"Sharp," he murmured, taking another step closer until the clean scent of cedarwood completely surrounded me. "I like that. You don't weep, you don't beg for mercy like a frightened animal. You analyze the board."

He dangled the USB drive between his thumb and forefinger, the tiny black plastic reflecting the sharp light of the overhead fixtures.

"The question isn't whether I'm going to kill you, Roxy," Kiran said softly, leaning down slightly so his voice dropped to a low, intimate hum that echoed in the quiet room. "The question is whether you're smart enough to realize that the men who killed your ex-fiancé aren't going to stop until every loose end is tied up in a bloody knot—starting with you."

The silence in the room stretched thin and heavy, filled only with the steady, mechanical beep of the IV monitor tracking the rhythm of my blood.