A Lost Shard.

I was born wrong in a family that only values power.
My twin sister was killed at birth because the Grants don't have daughters, and I was left alive to carry the curse. My name doesn't start with an L like my brothers'. I am the reminder of their sin. Raised without warmth, forced into the mafia before I could choose, I learned that love is weakness and control is survival. I hate my parents, but as the eldest, the future of the family is chained to me.

So they force a marriage.

Brooke Opal is meant to be leverage, a way to tame me. They miscalculated. I don't share. I don't loosen my grip. She is reckless, loud, defiant-and once she is mine, I will destroy anyone who tries to take her. She doesn't soften me. She sharpens every dangerous part of me.

Brooke

The city already decided who I am.
Reckless. Easy. A slut. I let them talk because I live the way I want-loud, unapologetic, craving romance and rough hands all at once. I feel deeply, and I refuse to be ashamed of it.

Then I'm sold into a mafia marriage.

My parents try to stop it and fail. Kazuya Grant doesn't pretend this is love. He claims me like territory-cold, possessive, terrifyingly calm. I hate the cage he puts me in. I hate how safe I feel inside it. Beneath his silence is pain I recognize, and beneath my recklessness is the same need-to be chosen, not traded.

I didn't choose him.
But I won't disappear for him either.