CHAPTER ONE
Some daughters are born into love, cradled in arms that promise protection. Others are born into silence—sterile rooms where monitors beep louder than congratulations, where fathers check watches instead of counting fingers and toes.
These daughters grow up learning to swallow their tears, to press compresses against split lips, bleed without leaving evidence or making a sound when the pain gets too much. I’d had someone that tried to shield me once, bartering with her body and sanity until both were gone.
Standing in my father’s office and feeling like an intruder in my home, always made me well aware of that. More so than usual. Cigar smoke hung in layers, mingling with a silence so deliberate it felt manufactured. Both pressed against my lungs with each breath I took.
The Istanbul rug beneath my feet displayed our family crest—once-vibrant gold threads now tarnished against faded crimson wool. Everything in this house lost its luster eventually.
Even people.
Dead men stared from oil paintings on the walls, ancestors who'd spilled blood to build what we had.
Between their frozen gazes, security systems hummed inside the plaster, recording every word, every movement.
I had entered without a sound, but he kept writing, giving me no sign of acknowledgement.
"Sit," he commanded without looking up after another tense few minutes rolled by.
The edge of the rug tickled my ankles as I lowered myself into the chair across from him. He placed his pen down with deliberate care. My eyes caught on his knuckles—a roadmap of pale scars that whispered of violence.
"You'll dine with Alaric Kostas tomorrow evening."
Something cold slithered down my spine. "Why?"
"To ensure he proposes marriage."
The sound that left my throat wasn't quite a laugh, more like air escaping a punctured tire.
His gaze held mine, and mother's warning echoed in my memory. His silence cuts deeper than his rage. In these moments, he weighs your fate. Mercy or punishment.
"Is something I just said amusing to you?" he asked, voice dangerously gentle.
I stared at my hands. "No, but Alaric has a fiancée."
"Had." Cigar smoke spiraled upward as he reclined in his chair and sparked a fresh one. "he’s now a free agent and has agreed to this. The Dominion requires he take a wife. You'll make it happen."
He wanted me to convince a Kostas to align with our family? Was there something mixed into his cigar that’d made his mind a bit wonky? The Kostas were so far above his standing it was laughable he’d even set this up. I didn’t trust what means he used for their beloved heir to agree to this.
Of course, I knew to keep that all to myself and my face carefully blank as I asked my next question. “Will The Dominion approve of this marriage?”
The corner of his mouth lifted without warmth. "Your ignorance is showing, Selene."
He rose and prowled around his desk. Italian leather halted just shy of my toes. Whiskey and sandalwood cologne enveloped me—the scent of captivity.
"At twenty-eight, you should appreciate my leniency." His voice took on a blade's edge. "Other daughters would have been bargaining chips the second they were born. I allowed you to play at independence."
Freedom.
Such a delusion.
My mouth betrayed me before my mind could intervene. "You mistake submission for choice."
His hand shot out. Not to bruise—those marks were reserved for deeper defiance. His grip captured my chin instead, steel-cold fingers tilting my face upward until I couldn't escape his stare.
"Submission is survival in this household. It's the tax you pay for drawing breath beneath my goddamn ceiling and what has kept your heart beating."
I answered with only my eyes. He released me with a scoff, straightened his sleeves, and reclaimed his seat behind the imposing desk as though our exchange had never happened.
"Tomorrow evening," he continued, "You'll be pretty and charming. You'll make Alaric believe you're worth the considerable investment I've made in your existence."
"Investment?" My voice betrayed me with its quiver. "In my existence?"
His phone began to ring, and he dismissed me with a flick of his wrist, like brushing away a bothersome insect.
I rose unsteadily, the ghost of his grip lingering on my skin.
I turned away as his voice suddenly honeyed with the artificial warmth he reserved for his public persona or the so-called friends he had there were as sick as him.
I exited the room without a backward glance, the cigar smoke clinging to my clothes as I moved down the hallway, marking me as his property even when I'd left his presence. I tried to make sense of the dinner he arranged as I headed toward my bedroom.
Darzi wasn't just a surname I inherited—it was a membership card to a world where power never announced itself. Where men in suits controlled more territory than any king, their weapons not armies but whispers exchanged in corner offices and handshakes that sealed fates.
Society pages labeled us "old money." Academic texts categorized us as "industrial pioneers." But in the shadows, we answered to our true name, The Dominion. It was not merely a dynasty—dynasties eventually fall—but a hunger that spanned generations, consuming everything in its path.
While nations rose and crumbled, The Dominion remained, invisible puppeteers pulling strings from behind marble facades, each family claiming its territory in an empire that appeared on no map.
The Kostas owned the seas, not just in metaphor but in brutal reality
Every ship that sailed, every crate that crossed borders, every whisper that traveled over water.
Trade, shipping, smuggling routes no customs officer dared inspect.
Every whisper that traveled over water belonged to them.
The Kostas family didn't just own the shipping lanes—they owned the very breath of those who dared cross their waters without permission.
The Darzis—my bloodline—trafficked in secrets and making inconvenient truths disappear like smoke.
The Manchesters didn't merely influence politicians, they owned their souls. The Voss dynasty controlled who prospered and who starved. The D'Amatos crafted destruction, then sold absolution at a premium.
This wasn't recorded anywhere because those who tried to document it were erased. This system had feasted on humanity since before the first throne was built. Each Dominion heir was branded at birth—not with visible marks, but with expectations of obligation, fealty, and lineage.
As for marriage, wedding vows within the Dominion were contracts drafted in blood and sealed with diamonds, a death sentence for free will if you had any.
Bodies became collateral, wombs transformed into vaults for preserving bloodlines, and bedrooms served as boardrooms where alliances were consummated.
My mother told me one thing often. when it came to being wed. To love was to invite destruction.
She had tried to shield me from this.
I could still feel her lips against my temple, burning there like a brand. "They won't have you," she'd hiss through clenched teeth. "Not you. Not Amara." Her voice would fracture, as if she were clawing at fate's throat.
The staff whispered my mother was insane, but I witnessed the raw truth carved into her face. She wasn't mad; she was flayed alive and still breathing, a woman reduced to exposed nerve endings with only me and my sister as the last threads stitching her to sanity.
My father's cruelty transcended art—it was religion.
The backhand at breakfast followed by the diamond bracelet at dinner that weighed her wrist down like a shackle.
The men—God, the men—paraded through our east wing, their grunts and my mother's stifled screams and moans leaking through walls as my father watched, sometimes directing them like a conductor before an orchestra of agony.
I learned to sleep to the soundtrack of her suffering; pillow clutched over my ears while bruises bloomed across her body beneath couture dresses. I prayed everyday he didn't pair me off with a man like him and I hadn’t had high hopes of escaping that fate. My mother had tried that as well.
She died trying.
Officially, her death was a tragic accident.
Unofficially, it was a planned and desperate escape with two daughters that ended with only one child returning home.
My father had her empty casket buried quickly.
No tears, no speeches, only the methodical removal of an inconvenience he could no longer ignore after he stood in a receiving line and pretended to care.
His mistress had stood beside him at the burial, right where my sister would have been.
Mom had somehow got Amara to safety that night, never making it back for me. I wasn't bitter about it, though. I pictured Amara somewhere with salt-tinged air and no expectations pressing down on her like tombstones.
If anything, I envied the way she must breathe no. Yet I never wished we could trade fates. Especially now. She would have been hitched to someone before I was, and with her wildfire temperament that refused to be contained, I could only imagine the type of man our father would've selected.
Admittedly, he had been right about my advanced age for a Dominion bride.
Twenty-eight was ancient by our standards, when most girls were gift-wrapped in white lace by nineteen.
In some twisted way, he seemed to enjoy my presence in his household, like keeping a rare bird in a gilded cage—a depreciating asset on his balance sheet that he refused to cast aside despite its diminishing returns.
I reached my room, and the door closed behind me with a soft click that felt like finality. I'd never felt as if I belonged here. I wasn’t sure I fit anywhere.
Now the pretense cut deeper than ever before.