trouble

I've always followed the rules.

My room was always clean, my grades always perfect, and my curfew never broken-not even once. My mother used to say I was born with an old soul. The type of girl who still reads books with pages, who volunteers at church, who says please and thank you even when people don't deserve it. And honestly? That was fine with me. I didn't want trouble.

But trouble found me anyway.

It had a name, a pulse, and a goddamn smirk that could make a nun reconsider her vows.

Zayne Moretti.

The name alone came with whispers. The kind of whispers that make you look over your shoulder and clutch your purse a little tighter. They said his family ran the city from the shadows-the drugs, the guns, the streets. Every corner, every alley, every dollar that changed hands-somehow, someway, it passed through the Moretti family.

And he was the son.

Tattooed, sharp-jawed, and always wearing black like he was mourning something-or someone. No one knew much, but they all knew enough.

So when he walked into my college class that morning-late, of course-and sat right beside me with that signature "I don't give a damn" energy radiating off him like cologne... I should've ignored him.

But I didn't.

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

And that's when the trouble started