Chapter 1 - THE BLOOD ON THE SHEETS
The dog had killed a man. Everyone on the Castellano estate knew that. So when one hundred and twenty pounds of scarred black pitbull stepped out of the basement shadows, bleeding heavily from the shoulder, the laundry staff vanished instantly.
Rosalind Whittaker stayed.
She stood between two industrial washing machines with a stack of sheets slipping from her arms while Titan stared at her. A broken leather strap dragged from his collar. The growl in his chest was so low Rosie felt it through the concrete before she properly heard it. Her left ear had been deaf since she was nine. Her right heard enough.
“Easy,” she whispered.
Titan showed his teeth, but Rosie noticed something: the old scar behind his left ear, and the way he kept turning his right side toward her—the exact way she positioned her good ear toward people.
“Oh,” she whispered. “You too?”
Six weeks earlier, Rosie had been a licensed veterinary technician. When a wealthy client demanded she falsify medical records to cover up animal neglect, Rosie refused. Her supervisor threw her under the bus, the client brought lawyers, and Rosie lost everything: her job, her apartment, and her savings. Desperate to support her sixteen-year-old brother, Leo, she took a cash-in-hand laundry job at the estate of Baltimore’s most feared man—Dante Castellano.
Now his monster was bleeding in front of her. Rosie filled a deep utility sink with warm water, soaked a clean sheet, and approached inch by inch. The moment the wet fabric touched his back, Titan locked up—then slowly leaned his massive body against her legs.
As she washed away the blood, more scars appeared beneath the fur: burn marks, torn flesh, and a half-erased tattoo inside his ear.
“You weren’t born dangerous,” she murmured softly.
She never heard the laundry-room door open. Titan’s head snapped up. Rosie turned to see a tall man in a dark wool coat flanked by two armed guards. Dark hair, still eyes, and an aura of absolute authority.
Dante Castellano.
His gaze moved from the bloody water to Rosie’s hands, then to Titan resting his heavy jaw on her hip. Something unreadable shifted in his dark eyes.
Dante took a step forward. “You.”
Rosie turned her good ear toward him. Dante noticed the movement instantly. He looked at her small frame, then at the blood on her hands, and said two words that shattered the silence:
“You’re mine.”
Rosie stared at him. “What?”
Dante’s eyes narrowed as Titan gave a soft, contented exhale—a sound no one on the estate had ever heard the dog make.
“Titan doesn’t let anyone touch him,” Dante said, his voice smooth as velvet and cold as ice. “He kills anyone who tries. Yet he’s sitting in a sink with you like a stray puppy.”
Before Rosie could reply, the heavy reinforced door swung open again. A man in a tailored grey suit stepped in, flanked by four men with visible shoulder holsters. It was Marcus Vance—Dante’s primary rival in the harbor cartel.
“Castellano,” Vance sneered, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on the dog. “I came to claim my property. That hound tore through three of my men at the docks tonight.”
“He belongs to my estate, Vance,” Dante said without moving an inch.
“He’s an unsanctioned weapon!” Vance snapped. He gestured toward Rosie. “And who is this? A cheap maid cleaning up your mess?”
Dante shifted his stance, stepping directly between Vance’s armed men and Rosie. His voice dropped an octave, dripping with dangerous absolute authority.
May you like
“She isn’t a maid,” Dante declared, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. “She’s my personal shadow. Touch her, or touch the hound, and you don’t leave this basement alive.”
Rosie’s breath hitched. She was trapped between the most dangerous mafia war in the city—and the terrifying man who had just claimed her as his own.
