Chapter 1
CHAPTER
ONE
ASHER
ONE YEAR AGO
My odds were shit from the start. Either my name or the slopes were gonna take me out eventually. But her?
Fuck.
I try to lift my head, but it weighs a thousand pounds, pulling at the muscles in my neck.
I manage to hold my chin up for a second before my strength fails and it hits my chest. Not that I want to look around this hellhole, since I’m certain I know where the fuck I am.
Everything is so white it burns, and since I’m already fucked up, I try to minimize the damage by shutting my eyes.
The smell is what I can’t ignore. Death has a specific scent, especially when you do it right.
Venom.
No matter how much bleach you use to hide it, it’s everywhere.
Leather cuffs bite into my wrists, and every few seconds the tendons in my arms pull, threatening to pop.
My body sways from chains bolted to the ceiling, the bitch keeping me strung up like fresh kill in a slaughterhouse.
Which…accurate.
Blood slips down my right side, a reminder of how I ended up here, and I wish I could tell her that the hole she shot through me isn’t even on my pain radar compared to the one she left in my fucking heart.
She left me there to bleed out. Cried. Said she was fucking sorry. I trusted you.
Laughter crawls out of me, but it dies faster than I do.
Unfortunately.
I tilt my head to hear better, but a sharp frequency pierces my ears while the air vents pulse overhead, coating my lungs in a sweet scent with every inhale.
Motherfucker. I know that scent, recognize the sugary toxin that takes weeks to leave your throat.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
A white dome catches my eye in the corner, hiding a state-of-the-art camera.
Yeah, bet they’re fucking watching.
I grin at it, flashing my teeth.
Gonna have to start praying too if I get out of here.
A speaker crackles overhead. “I’m so glad you’re still alive, Asher. Now, have you learned your lesson, or should we continue?”
Lessons are for children.
“Continue,” I rasp, throat aching from however long I was out.
Blood drips to the floor while the speaker box gives me nothing.
“Are you compromised, Delacroix?” she finally asks, her voice as sweet as the gas pumping into the room.
I pause, the corner of my lip curling. “Nah. Just…dying.”
I ain’t mad about it. I should kill her just for saving me. She should have left me there to rot.
“Hmm,” she mutters, and I can almost see her smug face. “Love would do that to you.”
My jaw snaps closed. “Who said anything about love?”
I’m a fucking liar. She doesn’t need to say it.
My wrists throb, fingers going numb, and I’d have taken death before waking here. Fuck you, Venom. Couldn’t even kill me properly.
“I’d suggest you not lie to me, Crow,” she says through the speaker.
I test the cuff, but there’s no give. Whoever set this up either knows restraints or knows me.
Ivy has been my safe space for longer than I care to admit, yet when I picture her green eyes now, all I feel is pain.
I hate her for it.
I need her for it.
The woman’s silence stretches until I want to claw through the speaker and drag her out by her throat.
“You’re three levels underground, surrounded by steel-reinforced walls and twenty-four-hour surveillance. Your fans think you’re recovering from a snowboarding accident.” Her laugh cuts through the static. “You’re not getting out, Asher. Not until I say so.”
My vision blurs red.
This is the psychiatric facility where people disappear into paperwork, where rich families bury their embarrassments.
“Fuck you.” The words scrape out of me, and I yank against the restraints until my shoulder screams, blood running faster down my side, hot and insistent. “Let me out.”
“Or what?” She sounds amused. “You’ll bleed on my floor? You’re already doing that.”
I pull harder, the chain rattling but holding as my feet slip in my own blood. I catch myself, gasping, the pain wiping my head blank for a second.
Ivy.
I need to find her, need to make her explain why she looked at me like that before she pulled the trigger, like I was already dead, like she’d mourned me months ago.
“Where is she?” I demand. My voice breaks halfway through and I don’t care. “Where’s Ivy?”
“There it is.” Her satisfaction loud. “The desperation. You’re rabid for her, aren’t you? Even after she shot you. Even after she left you dying.”
“Tell me where she is,” I demand.
“No,” she says.
I thrash against the cuffs, leather burning into my wrists while the chain shrieks and my vision tunnels. Everything hurts, everything narrowing down to the single thought that Ivy is out there and I’m locked in here.
“Let me OUT!” I roar, tearing my vocal cords.
Silence.
“This is pathetic,” the woman says. “Look at you. Feral over a girl who put a bullet in you.”
“She’s mine.” The words tear through all my restraint. I don’t give a fuck anymore. “She’s MINE.”
“She’s nothing.” She spits each word. “And by the time I’m done with you, you won’t want her anymore.”
I laugh, blood bubbling at the corner of my mouth as I lick it away.
My eyes drag up the wall, landing on the camera like I could see right through her.
“You don’t know me.”
“I know exactly what you are, Delacroix. You’re a rabid dog who thinks he’s a wolf. But rabid dogs get put down.” Her voice drops lower. “Or they get rehabilitated. Broken down. Remade into something useful.”
My arms burn and my side screams, my heartbeat thumping in the wound, each pulse pushing more blood out.
But all I can see is Ivy’s face, her shaking hands as she held me, the tears that fell even though she tried to stop them.
“You can drug me.” My words slur, but I force them out. “You can break me. But you won’t make me forget her.”
“We’ll see,” she says.
The speaker clicks off.
My eyes snap open to find her standing three feet away, close enough that I see the satisfaction curling her mouth. Black suit, black heels, black soul, everything about her screaming money and control.
“You smell like a funeral,” I rasp, each word dragging over what’s left of my throat. “Knew you couldn’t handle me without turning me into a zombie first?”
She doesn’t flinch, studying me like I’m a toy. “Still so much fight left. Impressive.”
“Let me down.” I smirk, jerking against the chains. “See how impressive I am.”
“Such violence.” She circles me slowly, heels clicking against concrete. “All for her.”
My jaw locks. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” She bats her eyes. “Speak the truth?”
She stops directly in front of me, close enough that her breath ghosts across my face. “She chose this, Asher. Chose to leave you dead. Chose to…”
My voice drops low, my eyes locked on hers. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Asher Delacroix,” the woman continues, voice never wavering. “Your father would be disappointed. You didn’t love her. She’s poison and you’re nothing more than the sickness.”
“She’s mine,” I growl.
“No.” She leans closer, her perfume choking me. “She’s gone. And you’re here. Alone. Broken. Exactly how we all knew she’d leave you.” Her eyes widen on me. “Do you believe us now? That she’s too far gone?”
Fucking bitch.
I roll the saliva in my mouth and spit in her face.
She blinks, her tongue swiping it off her lip. “Delicious. You know how much I adore you.”
I pull again, putting every ounce of weight into the movement until my shoulder vibrates with a wet pop.
Every bone screams in pain, but I give her nothing. Nothing but the snarl on my lips.
She tilts her head, unbothered. “Fascinating,” she murmurs, stepping closer. “All this power, ruined by a girl who never wanted saving.”
“By the time I’m done with you, Asher Delacroix, you’re not only going to hate Ivanya Dubois, but you’re going to want to kill her.”
I tug on the chains again.
She continues. “And you will. Right after you humiliate her by marrying my daughter.”