Vows in the Dark

Prologue

Jasmina

“I TOLD YOU I didn’t want you in that room with us, but you just had to make your presence known.

” Being shaken, my forearms gripped with bruising pressure, wasn’t as shocking as who was doing it.

My uncle loved Tomás. He would drone on and on about how he was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

Mostly, my uncle meant that Tomás was great for him, though.

Ever since we’d started dating, my uncle could discuss family business with the CEO of Abarca Solutions, Tomás’s father.

I had been willing to take one for the team and try to like Tomás. Yet, the man seemed to be an abuser I knew I wouldn’t be able to put up with.

I took a deep breath. “Tomás, you need to let go of me.” My voice was calm. Soft. Gentle in a way I really wasn’t. I wanted to shake him back, tell him to go to hell, and stomp my heel down hard on his Italian loafer.

My cousins, who I’d grown up with, they were gentle. They were soft and sweet and would have immediately appeased a man like him.

I really tried to channel them now because I, on the other hand, felt like this guy deserved a claw or two across his face. Later, when I told Maribel and Annarose about him, I hoped they’d be proud of how well I was taking his chauvinistic attitude.

“Don’t tell me what I need.” His hand went from my arm to my jaw, and this time he shoved me into the brick wall of the side of the building.

This fucking asshole.

That hint of red rage people felt before they exploded started to eke its way out. There was only so much a girl could take.

“Are you going to start listening now?” Tomás shook me again, his fingers digging into my cheeks with a desperate, clumsy force. “I need a girl who listens. I brought you tonight because I thought you’d listen. You haven’t.”

I stared at him, my expression a mask of bored indifference while my mind calculated the trajectory of the stiletto blade strapped to my thigh.

Most people would be trembling, but I was just checking the time.

Then, I wondered if I slit his throat right here, against the cold brick of the building’s exterior, would my uncles really care that much?

Tomás Abarca had money and connections that would benefit us, and I’d agreed to date him a month ago because of that. We all knew it.

Now? I just wanted him to bleed. Growing up in the shadow of a family like mine made you callous. You learned early that blood was just another currency.

“Maybe she’s not the girl for you, then.

” The voice drifted from the shadows like smoke.

It was smooth, rich, and dangerous. A man stepped into the sliver of moonlight, looking every bit like a knight in shining armor.

Unfortunately for him, I didn’t want to be saved.

“Maybe, instead,” the stranger mused, his eyes tracking the way Tomás’s hand gripped my face, “she’s the girl for me. ”

“What?” Tomás’s hand dropped instantly. The bravado vanished, replaced by a flicker of fear that was pathetic to witness.

The newcomer moved with a lethal, feline grace. He was all smiles, but the heat radiating off him told a different story. He looked like trouble wrapped in a bespoke Italian suit—broad shoulders, sharp jawline, and eyes that didn’t just see you: They dismantled you.

“Tomás,” the man said, his tone deceptively conversational. “You know how I feel about the way we treat women. Don’t disrespect them in my presence.”

“Cal, I … do you know her?” My date’s voice cracked slightly as he looked from him to me like he was reassessing bringing me.

But he’d been the one acting ridiculous.

He’d dragged me out of the gala and around the corner to throw me into a brick wall, all because I walked into a meeting where he, my uncles, the Irish, and half the East Coast power structure were seated together.

He acted as if I hadn’t been in a meeting before, as if I were some naive girl who didn’t belong there. I wasn’t his decorative sidepiece.

I’d earned my spot there. I was my uncles’ right hand when it came to finances. I balanced all their ledgers and cleaned those financials like the best of them could. I may have been a woman, but I could bring most of them down too.

Maybe Tomás didn’t know any of that yet. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, considering he’d only recently started working with us.

Cal, however, looked like a man who already knew everything.

He was all trouble and charm wrapped into a devastatingly delicious package.

The tailored black suit encasing large, broad shoulders, but eyes so sharp they weren’t going to miss a single detail.

He was the kind of man my cousins, Maribel and Annarose, would obsess over—and then complain about when he inevitably ruined their lives.

He was too confident, too attractive, and far too dangerous for my libido.

“Does it matter if I know her?” Cal asked Tomás.

“Well, this is a private matter—”

“How’s the business, by the way?” Cal sighed, leaning against the wall with a predatory ease. His smile stayed fixed, but his aura shifted, oozing a false warmth that actually made Tomás relax.

So much for men who gave a damn.

Not that I needed it. I had the situation under control.

“Aw, Cal. Business is good. Dad’s—”

Cal’s tone turned deadly. “Do all men there enjoy hurting women?” That charm, so quickly he’d turned it on, I saw it now for what it was. A tool. And a weapon. One that was absolutely lethal.

“What?” Tomás stuttered.

“Do you enjoy it? Putting your hands on her?”

The words fell softly. Precisely. Like glass dropped onto marble.

Tomás scoffed, nerves bleeding through his bravado. “Hey, man, I regret you had to see that. It was just—”

“If you ever do it again,” Cal interrupted, stepping into Tomás’s personal space until the smaller man was practically vibrating, “you won’t just regret that I saw it. You’ll regret that you ever had hands to begin with. I’ll take them from you, along with your entire legacy.”

Tomás swallowed hard. His gaze flicked to me, then away, like he couldn’t quite meet my eyes anymore.

Cal nodded once toward the doors. “Go inside.”

Tomás didn’t even try to argue. He turned and walked back into the gala like a scared puppy with his tail between his legs.

I didn’t know whether I was relieved that the asshole had left or disgusted that he’d left me with a man who had threatened him with violence.

It was the latter, I decided. The guy was a spineless coward, and now I was going to have to feed his ridiculous, damaged ego all night.

Cal didn’t seem concerned about the conundrum he’d just created for me.

He didn’t even watch Tomás leave. His focus was entirely on me, letting the silence stretch until it felt like a physical weight.

He was sizing me up, and for the first time tonight, I felt a genuine spark of heat—not from anger, but from the raw, carnal intensity in his gaze.

He leaned back against the brick wall and let the charm unfurl again. “You okay, beautiful?”

I blinked, scoffing at how effortlessly he’d flipped the switch back to gentleman.

“I was always fine.” I tilted my head, my voice dripping with ice. “But leave it to a man to think he’s the hero of the story.”

He looked genuinely caught off guard. “Wasn’t I? You’re clearly better off without that pathetic excuse for a date.”

“Or maybe I’m worse off. Now I’m stuck out here with a stranger who threatens people with bodily harm. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, right?”

A low, dark chuckle escaped him. “Are you saying I’m a threat to you, Viper?”

My pulse jumped at the nickname, though I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to ignore the way my body liked hearing him laugh. Man, he was way better looking than my date. Still, I reminded us both, “You’re an unknown, and that’s always a risk.”

“Let me introduce myself, then.”

Before he could say another word, though, a familiar, condescending tone flowed from the building’s doors. “Jas, what are you doing out here with him?”

“Paolo, is that the way to introduce me to …” Cal smirked as he tasted my name on his lips. “Jas?”

“She needs no introductions to you.”

“And why is that?” he asked, dragging his eyes slowly over my body. The fire I felt was one I never got from Tomás.

“Because she’s my niece,” Paolo spat, stepping between us as if I were a piece of property he was shielding from a thief. That was Paolo’s way.

I was an asset. A tool. I’d worked myself to the bone to earn a seat at his table, and he never let me forget who owned the chair. He’d actually told me if I was going to have a seat near him, I’d better prove I could adopt the same mentality.

I’d endured enough to get there.

“And she knows a Diamond and a snake when she sees one, Callahan Knight.” I tried not to stumble back as my uncle said his full name. “Right, Jas?”

Callahan Knight.

I knew how to kill, cheat, and survive within our family. But schooling my expression as I stood in front of one of our greatest enemies was a skill I had to learn quickly. We’d lost a lot of ground on the East Coast, and I was very aware it had a lot to do with the Diamonds.

The fact that I was even conversing with one was completely wrong. To find out it was a Knight …

Disgusting.

And catastrophically off-limits.

“Interesting.” Callahan dragged out the word, but his eyes stayed on mine even as I stepped back. “You afraid of a Diamond, Jas?”

“She’s got nothing to be afraid of,” my uncle spat, his pride louder than Callahan’s insinuation. But his pride also made him stupid by showing my hand much too quickly. “She could gut you in a second: one of the best fighters I have in all the family.”

The statement had Callahan tilting his head, as if he was now confused. “But your boyfriend was—”

“My date,” I clarified. “Tomás was just overexcited. There was no need to correct him.”

“And Tomás is waiting for us inside,” Paolo said as he motioned me toward the door.