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PROLOGUE

KEIRA

Galway, Ireland

Three Years Ago

The dress was perfect—ivory silk, custom fit, boned bodice and lace hem. Finn had sent it himself, said he wanted to give her something soft to walk down the aisle in, something beautiful.

Keira Lynch stood in the back hallway of the O’Neill estate chapel, her hands clenched around a small folded piece of paper. It was old—creased a hundred times over, the words smudged where she’d cried on it the night before. Her uncle Cathal’s handwriting was unmistakable. So was the truth it held.

“You were never meant to love him, girl. You were leverage. I got you close so we could all come out clean. One marriage. One debt erased. Con wants blood; I offered you instead, and he accepted.”

As she read the words again, the dress began to feel like armor—too heavy. Too tight. Like it was choking her. She was a bargaining chip. Not a bride.

Not a woman who’d spent the last year learning how to breathe with Finn O’Neill beside her. Not the girl who’d told himshe loved him on a rooftop under winter stars. Not the woman who’d said yes, thinking—for once—it was about choice and not survival.

“You ready, love?” one of the O’Neill enforcers asked, poking his head around the corner.

Keira turned. Smiled. Lied.

“Almost.”

He nodded and disappeared.

Her throat was raw. Her pulse a riot.

She didn’t remember walking to the side entrance. Didn’t remember stripping off the veil or changing into shoes in which she could run. She just knew the next breath she took was on the street, cold air slicing into her lungs like punishment.

She ran—not for her life, but for her soul. She would not allow what small bits remained of her self-worth to be bought and sold like mafia property.

She left Finn standing at the altar, and she never looked back.

Boston, Massachusetts

Present Day

Boston hadn’t changed.

Still full of ghosts. Still full of rot beneath its stone and steel skin.

Keira stepped off the train, one backpack slung over her shoulder, hoodie pulled up tight. She blended in with the crowd. No silk. No heels. No wedding bells. Just adrenaline and a bone-deep dread that made her teeth ache.

She hadn’t set foot in Ireland or this city since she’d left him.

But she didn’t have a choice.

Not after Dubai.

The job was supposed to be clean. A quick hack-and-grab, cracking into a shell corporation to retrieve damning evidence for a whistleblower client. She’d done a dozen like it. Only this time, the files weren’t about corporate corruption—they were about people. Dangerous people. A ledger tying the O’Neill family to offshore accounts, laundering and hits. And one line she could never unsee:

F. O’Neill—Primary Enforcement Asset.

She hadn’t been the only one watching.

Within twelve hours, the corporation’s building from which she’d hacked the data went dark. The safe house was compromised. The client disappeared. And someone left her a message on a phone for which no one knew the number—"Run faster, little fox. Your debt has been acquired. The terms are now enforced by The O’Neill.”

She dumped her real ID, wiped her drives, and went to ground. But they found her anyway.