PROLOGUE

It’s late, and it was raining. Not the heavy dramatic type of rain - the soft drizzle type. The type that made her looked like she was glowing.

She’s laughing.

Not with me. Not for me.

But I hear it anyway.

She’s standing outside a gallery in that red dress. One arm around her friend, the other holding a paper cup of wine, like the world hasn’t touched her yet. Like she’s still untouched by the kind of men who ruin beautiful things.

Like me.

I stay in the car. Watch from across the street with a silence I've perfected over the years.

Lights flicker above her, casting shadows that dance across her smile.

She doesn’t know I exist.

Not yet.

But I know her.

I know the way she bites the inside of her cheek when she’s nervous.

I know she checks her door twice before leaving the house.

I know she sleeps on the left side of the bed, always with the window cracked open.

And I know she deserves more than the life she’s been handed.

I see Derek step out of the corner and whisper something in her ear that made her laugh again - and seeing that made my skin crawl.

Probably another one of his lame jokes.

He had his arm around her waist like he owned her, his hand low enough to make me want to snap his wrist.

She leaned into him, trusting, too soft for the man who didn’t deserve her.

That was the part that made me clench my jaw—the trust.

She had no idea the kind of man he really was.

I knew.

And one day I'd make sure she saw that too.

I’d been watching him long before she entered the picture. Derek Dante was all noise—loud suits, empty bank accounts, and pathetic debts wrapped in charm.

And somehow he's had her wrapped around his fingers with that charm for five years now.

I've waited long enough.

I've seen long enough - if she wasn't going to open her eyes and see the man he truly was then it was time for me to take matters into my own hands.

I watched her all night from across the street. Every smile, every flick of her fingers through that rain-soaked hair. I watched the way she looked at Derek—like he was something more than the walking fraud he was.

And I hated him for it.

I hated that she didn’t know better. That she gave pieces of herself to someone who only took.

She deserved more.

More than that cheap suit.

More than a man who bet her like spare change.

More than a life where she never saw herself clearly.

She deserved everything.

I could give it to her.

Not because I’m good.

I’m not.

But because I knew what it meant to want something and never have it.

And I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

She brushed the water from her arms, and Derek tugged her close, kissed her cheek.

My hand curled into a fist against the leather seat.

He didn’t deserve to touch her.

He didn’t deserve to even speak her name.

And when the day finally came…

When the cards landed exactly where I wanted them…

He’d lose her.

And I’d take her.

Not as a prize.

As mine.