“Choose one.” Barrett Hayes’s voice sliced through the ballroom on the eighty-eighth floor of the Ashford Tower. I stood against the far wall with an empty silver tray pressed tightly against my ribs,

The penthouse was a gilded fortress suspended above the glittering lights of Manhattan. I was escorted up by two stone-faced men with earpieces who treated me not like a prisoner, but like a live grenade.

When the elevator opened, I found Kendrick standing before a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, a glass of amber scotch resting in his hand. He had stripped off his suit jacket, rolling his crisp white sleeves up to his forearms, revealing dark, intricate tattoos that crawled over his muscular forearms—tattoos signifying rank in a world built on blood.

Titan was curled by a massive hearth. The moment I stepped out, the beast lifted his head, gave a single soft huff, and trotted over to lean his immense weight against my hip.

“He has killed three men,” Kendrick said, not turning around. “One was a federal informant. Two were assassins sent by the Chicago syndicate. Titan doesn't let anyone touch him except Penny and me.”

He turned around slowly. The city lights cast harsh angles across his sculpted jaw.

“Yet tonight, he offered you his throat.” Kendrick took a slow sip of his scotch. “Why?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Ashford,” I whispered, clutching the strap of my worn canvas bag. “I swear I don’t.”

That was a half-lie. I knew why the dog recognized me, but admitting it meant confessing to an event three years ago that the Ashford family had spent millions trying to bury.

Three years ago, before I moved to Queens under an assumed identity, I had worked as a nighttime trauma technician at a covert veterinary clinic in Brooklyn. One stormy night, two masked men had dumped a bleeding, bullet-riddled mastiff pup onto our metal table, holding a gun to my head while I stitched his torn arteries and removed three slugs from his chest. When they passed out from exhaustion and whiskey, I stayed up until dawn soothing the terrified pup, pressing a small, hand-carved lavender wooden token into his collar to calm his racing heart.

The pup was Titan. The men were later executed in a turf war, but Titan had survived.

If Kendrick discovered I was the girl from that illegal clinic, he would realize I had seen the faces of his highest lieutenants—and that I knew about the betrayal that had nearly cost him his empire.

“My daughter hasn't spoken five words to a stranger since her mother died,” Kendrick continued, his tone quiet, almost meditative, yet laced with terrifying gravity. “Tonight, she picked you. In front of the council. In front of Barrett Hayes.”

“I’m just a waitress, Mr. Ashford. Let me go back to my apartment. I won’t say a word to anyone.”

A dark smile played on his lips. “Go back? To where, Maya? To the cramped walk-up in Sunnyside where you owe three months of back rent? Or to the streets where Barrett’s men are already waiting to slit your throat to erase the humiliation you caused his daughter?”

My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. “What?”

“You made fools of the most powerful families in the city tonight,” Kendrick said, stepping closer. The scent of cedar and expensive tobacco enveloped me. “By dawn, Barrett will put a price on your head just to prove a point. You walk out those double doors, and you won’t survive the night.”

“Then why keep me here?” I challenged, my fear sparking into anger. “What do you want from me?”

He set his glass down on a glass table. “A nanny. A shield. Penny needs someone she trusts. For reasons I have yet to uncover, she trusts you. And Titan would rip apart anyone who tries to hurt you.”

He pulled a thick manila folder from a drawer and tossed it onto the desk.

“Five hundred thousand dollars a year. Full diplomatic immunity under the Ashford crest. A private suite in this penthouse. In exchange, you become Penny’s constant shadow. You live here. You eat here. You do not leave without an armed escort.”

“And if I refuse?”

Kendrick leaned down, his face inches from mine, his silver eyes flashing with quiet menace. “I don’t make offers twice, Miss Vance. You choose life inside my cage, or you choose the wolves waiting at the door.”

From the hallway, a small voice broke the silence.

“Maya?”

Penny stood in the doorway in oversized silk pajamas, clutching a worn teddy bear. She looked small, fragile, and terrified of the shadows.

Titan whined and looked at me, then at the little girl.

I looked into Kendrick’s unyielding eyes, then at the child who had pulled me into the center of a mafia blood feud. My survival instincts screamed at me to run, but my conscience froze.

“I’ll take the job,” I said softly.