Bound to the syndicate boss
His ice-grey eyes reflected the freezing sea outside, hard and unyielding, completely consumed by a storm he had spent a decade engineering.
"She has spirit," Mikael said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that barely carried across the expansive, minimalist room. "If she didn't fight, she wouldn't be her father's daughter."
"Spirit is a luxury we are rapidly running out of, Mikael," I replied, setting the reports down and interlocking my fingers on the desk. "The regional council convenes in less than twelve hours. The captains from Turku and Tampere are already whispering. They know an unannounced marriage to a missing Italian heiress violates every traditional statute of the Pohjola syndic