Chapter 1 - THE FIRST WOMAN WHO DIDN’T FLINCH
The third therapist quit because I threw a glass paperweight at his head.
He needed six stitches.
By then, everyone inside my estate had learned one rule:
Don’t surprise Danny Mercer.
Not after the sniper.
Not after the bullet entered my spine and stole everything below my waist.
Before the shooting, half of Chicago’s underground knew my name. Men who frightened everyone else lowered their voices around me. Politicians returned my calls. Rivals understood that I rarely gave a second warning.
Then one bullet put me in a wheelchair.
My empire survived.
My reputation survived.
My legs didn’t.
And somehow, that made me worse.
That night, Luke—my second-in-command and the closest thing I had to a brother—walked into my study holding the therapist’s resignation.
“He’s gone.”
“He was useless.”
“He needed stitches, Danny.”
“He talked to me like I was five.”
Luke stared at me.
“This house isn’t a fortress anymore. It’s a grave.”
“Get out.”
He didn’t move.
“You’re making everyone pay for what happened to you.”
Before I could answer, a woman appeared in the doorway carrying a bucket.
Dark hair. Cheap shoes. Gray cleaning uniform.
She looked exhausted.
Not scared.
She knelt beside the baseboard and began scrubbing.
I stared at her.
“Who the hell are you?”
Without looking up, she said, “Emma.”
“Emma what?”
“Carter.”
Nobody ignored me in my own house.
“I didn’t tell you to keep working.”
Emma finally looked at me.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“What?”
“If I stop, I don’t get paid. And if I don’t get paid, I can’t afford to be here.”
Luke turned his face away, hiding a smile.
I studied her.
Everyone had heard stories about me.
The broken glasses.
The fired nurses.
The therapist leaving bloody.
Emma either hadn’t heard them…
or had bigger problems.
“Finish the hallway,” I said.
She nodded.
“Okay.”
Then she turned her back on me.
That should have been the last time I noticed Emma Carter.
Instead, it was the beginning of everything.
Because two weeks later, I woke in my own bed…
May you like
with Emma pressed against my side.
And my hand was already reaching for the gun beneath my pillow.
