Page 1

DECEMBER



















One

The bottle of winein my hand nearly becomes a casualty as I slip on the ice just outside my house. No, not my house.Hishouse. Everything we own is his — the house, the cars, the boat, the timeshare in Cabo. Even me. The gaudy engagement ring straining to break through the fabric of my glove marks me as his property, too. The great Jacob Hart, hacker extraordinaire and favorite of the local mafia.

Of course, if you ask anyone, Provost Ephraim Creed isn’t running a mafia. He’s running good businesses, they’d say. He’s running a fine academy.

But St. Andrew’s isn’t a school for religious nuts or peacekeepers, no. It’s a school for whores with big dreams. The three houses and various dorms train the people who attend in the art of submission, subservience, and espionage. They’ll train you how to use the holes God gave you to fuck the secrets out of the most powerful men in the world, and how to wield those secrets like knives. They’ll teach you how to sit at the table with presidents and kings, dictators and prime ministers.

Pretty and pristine, dangerous and dapper.

When you’re finished with St. Andrew’s, you’ll be able to temper the cruelest of men, climb to the heights of society. Pussy can end wars, they say. Men can only think with one head at a time, so keep the blood rushing south and suddenly they can’t remember why a little bit of oil in a far off land was worth killing over.

That’s what they taught me, anyway. And Creed made it clear when he wrapped a pretty little bow around my cunt and handed me off to Jacob Hart that nothing will ever belong to me. No property in my name, no signatures on any documents except our marriage certificate. I’m a pawn. And as the daughter of Saint City’s newest police chief, I’m a fucking important pawn. So it’s not my house I slip outside of, it’s his. It’s not my wine I almost drop, it’s his.

And it’s his fault.

The bastard was supposed to be gone for another couple of hours, buthisChristmas tree is lit up in the window and the lights we strung around the ceiling are casting a multi-colored glow across the living room. I know I didn’t leave them on, which means I can kiss my bubble bath goodbye. If he’s home early, his meeting didn’t go well. If his meeting didn’t go well, I’ll be spending my evening hung from the ceiling by my ankles while he fucks my throat until I can’t speak anymore.

Merry fucking Christmas.

Bracing myself, I unlock the front door and set the wine down on the entryway table without looking at him. “Hi,” I say quietly, lightly, as I slip my gloves off and bend down to remove my boots. God forbid I track a little snow on the hardwood. “How did it go?”

Silence.

Usually Jake is first in line to bitch about anything and everything, so I allow myself to have a tiny bit of hope things might have gone okay.

All hope diminishes the second I look up to find Jake splayed out on the floor and a man I’ve never seen before sitting next to the tree with a Santa hat on. He has one foot resting on my fiancé’s body as he munches on a cookie without a care in the world, and I stop breathing entirely at the sight. Sky blue eyes rake my frame as he chews, a small, curved scar high on his left cheekbone snagging my attention before I take in the rest of his devilishly handsome face. “Hey there, little keeper. Did you make these cookies?”

Not the mafia, but something close. Creed is a dangerous man with dangerous people working for him.

My heartbeat remains steady as I size him up. “Who are you?” I ask calmly, then dip my head down toward Jake’s body. “Is he dead then?”

His plump lips curl up into a smile as he takes another bite. “You’re Sullivan Harbough, right?”

Sullivan, Sully, or Sullen as my dad used to call me. “You locked the door behind you. Was it to trap him in here, or lull me into a false sense of security?”