Chapter 1
ONE
SUMMONS
ANNALIESE
Three months after I ended things with him for good, Eric summons me back by text with the same amount of words:
EW
Come to me.
No greeting. No explanation. No apology, as if a high-ranking member of the Order—and my hidden lover for more than two years—would ever lower himself enough to apologize to the woman he ruined.
Ruined.
He ruined me.
I believed him. When he told me he loved me, I believed him. When he told me I was special, I believed him. When he said that his wife was in hospice, unable to do her duties, and that when she eventually passed, I would be her replacement because we were meant to be… I believed him.
But Cicely Ward was never sick. Too naive…
too enthralled… to question all of the inconsistencies, I let him keep me a secret, let him coddle me, let him turn me into the perfect mistress.
I wore my hair the way he liked. I dressed in outfits that he paid for and approved.
I lived in his house before I found an apartment of my own…
and I ignored any sign of the woman who had been his Offering two decades before.
She didn’t live with him. That much I know is true. She had her own residence, their marriage one of convenience these days, one of standing. There is no divorce in the Order of the Owed. It’s ‘til death do you part, and I thought her death would lead me to my happily-ever-after.
For four years, he was my client. My mentor. My friend. Then, slowly yet inevitably, he became more. My confidant. My boss.
My lover—until I pushed for a marriage that would never happen, and he became nothing more than the man responsible for taking an Offering and making it so that I could never marry a ranking member of the society.
He called me his ‘good girl’. He promised me forever, but didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. He lied, and now he thinks he can text me for the first time in months and I’ll drop everything to go running to him?
I should’ve blocked him. Stupid Annaliese.
I should’ve blocked him, but when all he said as I grabbed my purse, abandoning everything else I owned behind me, was to make sure I left my keys behind on my way out, I didn’t see why I should.
Eric made his position clear. He would never leave Cicely, and all I could hope for was my place in his bed and whatever trinkets he thought would distract his young mistress.
I refused, and he let me go as easily as if the last two years hadn’t meant a thing to him.
As if I hadn’t meant a thing to him.
Because old habits are hard to kill—even when the smarmy man who shaped them deserves to be dead and buried beneath them for his cruelty—I read the text and instantly have to resist the urge to obey. My body goes rigid, my breath tripping over itself as I stare at the three words.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. It’s like I’m twenty-three again, foolish enough to believe that an established member of Harmony Height’s secret society would love me for me, and not because I was twenty years his junior.
Come to me.
I delete the message without replying.
Two minutes later, another arrives.
Now.
I could leave him on read. Eric might get the hint then, or he might actually call me next. Sure, I could refuse to answer, but… damn it.
Panic mingled with perverse curiosity wins out.
I type out a two-letter message while biting down on my lip.
Ok
Eric’s house looks exactly the same: clean white stone, perfect hedges, and a gate out front that he left open since he would’ve known I couldn’t resist before I sent my text.
It’s expensive without trying too hard, a house that whispers old money and even older power.
The kind that only Order men from founding families can flaunt.
It’s always belonged to the Wards. The house that Cicely lives in was gifted to her after their Order-arranged wedding. She kept it when their marriage turned into what it is now, and Eric returned to his family home.
He told me it would be ours.
I park in the circular drive, my racing heart hammering against my ribs. For two years, it was mine. So why doesn’t it feel like I’ve come home to be back again?
I grab my purse; I don’t want my phone or my keys out of my reach, just in case. Then, checking my lipstick and hair in the rearview mirror one last time—also out of habit—I climb out of the car. A quick brushing down of my skirt and I’m ready to go.
The front door opens before I even get the chance to knock, and there he is.
Eric Ward.
He has a staff, and I expected Jonathon to be the one to let me in.
It would’ve given me a few more moments to compose myself before I was brought before Eric.
Seeing him cast his icy blue gaze over me, smiling in approval at what he sees, I hate that a part of me preens to know that I’ve passed his inspection.
Of course I did. Eric spent a lot of time and effort turning me into the Annaliese I am today. All it took was one text, one summons, and I was able to slip right back into the same role.
He doesn’t look any different, either. Standing in the doorway, backlit by the warm golden light of his front room, he looks every inch the polished gentleman I was fooled into believing he was.
Cream-colored sweater, brown slacks, salt-and-pepper hair perfect as always. His smile is soft. Welcoming.
It’s another lie.
“Please. Come in,” he says.
My legs move on their own, heels click-clacking against the hard wood floor as he leads me past the pristine foyer toward the den.
In the entire house, it’s the only one I considered to be Eric’s room.
It suits him, with the dark leather furniture, the heavy mahogany bookcase, the massive desk where he’d work after leaving the office, and a noticeable bar cart in one corner stocked with his preferred—and very expensive—whiskey.
I pause in the doorway. Eric sidles around me, hand swiping possessively over my ass as he lingers long enough to breathe me in. I shiver, but he’s already gone. Wearing a pleased smirk, he walks around his desk, taking the seat.
There is no seat for me. For anyone, really.
After all, this is Eric’s space, and I was rarely invited in here.
That he wants to have this discussion here makes my nerves even worse.
I move to stand in front of his desk while he’s sitting, but rather than feel as though my height gives me the advantage, it’s more like I’m back in school, facing off against the principal.
“Annaliese.” His tone is too, too familiar. “You’ve kept me waiting.”
I swallow back the shakiness. “I left as soon as I received your text.”
“I think we both know that that’s not what I mean.” He laughs, low and amused, only I’m not buying it. The look in his eyes… “You’ve been sulking, sweetheart. It’s unseemly. This has gone on long enough. Come home.”
“I don’t live here anymore, Eric. I have my own place—”
He scoffs. “A hovel in the west side of town. Please. You know it doesn’t compare.”
He’s not wrong. It doesn’t compare, but it’s not a hovel.
I have a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a decent building full of middle class families and bachelors trying to break into the Order’s stranglehold on Harmony Heights.
It’s nicer than I could afford without my parents’ help, but it’s mine. That’s the important part. It’s mine.
“You broke up with me,” I remind him. I gave him an ultimatum: marry me or lose me forever.
He can’t marry me, and that meant he had to end things.
Sure, I fool myself into believing that I broke up with him, but I don’t have any power when it comes to Eric Ward.
I never have. “I loved you. I wanted to stay. But you? You pushed me away.”
His practiced smile turns brittle. “You’re upset. Understandable.” He leans forward in his seat, resting his elbows on the top of his desk. “But I’ve decided I’m ready to forgive you.”
I freeze. You have got to be fucking kidding me.
“And,” he continues smoothly, “I’m willing to take you back.”
As his mistress?
“No,” I say. Quiet. Firm.
He cocks his head.
I shake mine.
Eric sucks in a breath. His cheeks sharpen. His jaw goes tight. “What did you say?”
He heard me. I know he did. It’s just that, as a partnered lawyer at Ward, St. James, and Marshall’s firm, he’s not used to anyone saying ‘no’ to him.
Especially not me. I was his companion, his lover, his goddamn personal secretary after he convinced me to leave Mom’s event planning company three years ago so I could work for him instead as some kind of glorified note-taker… I wasn’t allowed to say ‘no’.
It feels pretty damn good to be able to do so now.
“I’m not coming back to you.”
His eyes turn frosty. “You forget who you belong to.”
No. I don’t. “It’s not you, Eric.”
Not anymore.
“You will do what you’re told. Come back to me and I’ll make it all up to you.”
Do what I’m told?
I won’t.
I chose obedience over love—and made the worst fucking mistake of my life.
Before Eric seduced me into sleeping with him the first time, I lived for the moments when I’d earned his approval.
There wasn’t anything he could tell me that I wouldn’t do.
I was his from the moment he first complimented an event I’d helped my mother plan, and eventually he had a piece of every part of me: heart, body, and soul.
I obeyed, and then I loved him, believing that one would lead to the other.
But there’s no love anymore. Not from the moment he tossed me aside like I was garbage and I licked my wounds by doing the most impulsive, reckless thing I could think of: stopping at the first dive bar I found outside of Harmony Heights, trying my first cocktail, then picking the most gorgeous guy in the bar to fuck the memory of Eric Ward’s cold blue eyes out of my brain if only for the moment.
It worked. I replaced Eric’s with a pair of soft brown ones, a charming smile, a dimpled cheek, and an inch-long scar over his eye that didn’t detract from his prettiness.
Oh, no. In the smoky haze of the Last Prayer, it only highlighted how attractive my stranger was.
Three months later, I still kick myself for not taking him up on his offer to go home with him, but I’d promised myself when I left Eric for the last time, I would never willingly obey a man again.
Not the man with the dark blond hair and a body made for sin—and not the man who is waiting expectantly behind my desk for me to give in.
Again.
No.
“You can’t fix something you broke. Not like this. Not with a snap of your fingers or one of your back room deals. I’m a person, Eric—”
“You’re mine.”
I was. “If this is all you wanted to talk to me about, I should be leaving.”
“Talk? Sweetheart, I didn’t ask you here to talk.” He snorts softly. “Talk… no. This is my attempt to negotiate.”
Always the lawyer, I think. “Negotiate what? I made my terms very clear.”
“I know. You wanted me to Claim you as my Offering, forgetting the fact that I’m well past thirty, my dear, and I already have one. And you… you’re not an Offering, are you?”