That sick smile spread across his face again. “There’s my good girl.” Then it disappeared. His voice turned colder than death. “But baby… you went too far. I can’t let it slide.”
“One.”
“No—!”
Before I could scream, his bodyguard moved. One hard kick to Aziel’s chest. I watched my baby brother fall.
One second he was standing there, crying, waiting for me to come get him and the next, he was gone. Nothing but air.
My scream ripped through the steel frame of that unfinished building. My lungs shredded. My arms flailed, trying to reach for him, to run, to leap. But two guards grabbed me, dragged me back as I thrashed like an animal.
The wind howled louder. The city lights below blurred with my tears. And that bastard, he just sat there. Calm. Unbothered.
Just eight years ago, I was Mrs. Harmony Masterson. Respected. Feared. Admired.
I was the queen beside the heir of the most powerful mafia family in Masterson Heights. Then everything started to fall apart. Because of one fire.
That afternoon, my mother’s house went up in flames. She was locked inside. The report said faulty wiring. An accident.
But I knew better. By the time I got there, the fire trucks were gone and all that remained was smoke, ash, and a tarp over her body.
Something in me cracked.
Hakeem held me that night. Promised justice. Swore he’d find whoever did it and burn them alive. But when we got the security footage from a neighbor’s porch camera... everything changed.
The woman spotted near the back gate moments before the fire? Margaret Lawrence. The ghost from his past. The woman everyone thought was dead. But she wasn’t.
Suddenly, my dead mother didn’t matter. Suddenly, justice didn’t matter. All that mattered was her.
He forgot everything else.
Including me.
I begged him to press charges. He said no. I demanded justice. He said she needed help.
I pushed harder and he snapped.
So he took Aziel.
“My love,” he said with that fake-soft voice, “just one signature and it all ends. Stop living in the past.”
I never thought it would come to this.
I used to believe he loved me.
Hakeem Masterson chased me like his life depended on it. Everyone said I was just a fling, some pretty little thing from the slums he’d throw away when he got bored. I thought so too. So I left. I faked my death and vanished.
He went insane. The polished, untouchable heir went full-on suicidal when he found my clothes by the sea.