Claiming the RUNT
"I told you once, Obi... power is the only truth. Your father taught me that while I bled in his gutters. Now, I’m the one with the power, and you’re the one on your knees."
In the cold, ruthless world of the Shadowfang Syndicate, the weak are nothing but collateral. Obi Ashford was born the "runt" of the most powerful mafia dynasty in the country—the Black Eagle. Deaf, sickly, and discarded by his own father, Duke Gideon Ashford, Obi lived as a ghost in a gilded cage, bearing the literal scars of his family's cruelty on his back.
But when the empire falls, the ghosts come back to haunt the living.
Cassius Okoye has returned. Once a high-born heir himself, he spent ten years as a branded slave in the Ashford household after the Duke razed his family to the ground. Now, he is the Sire of the Syndicate, the man who conquered the Ashfang Dominion in a single night of fire and blood. He came for vengeance. He came to destroy every last Ashford.
When Cassius finds Obi trembling in the Hollow Pit, he expects to find a monster's son. Instead, he finds a broken boy who can’t even hear the threats whispered in his ear.
Cassius promised to give the Ashford heir hell. He intended to use Obi to break the Duke's legacy, claiming him as a slave, a toy, and a debt to be paid in the bedroom. But as he peels back the layers of Obi’s past, he discovers a horrifying truth: the boy he wants to destroy was never the enemy—he was the first victim.