III

EIGHT YEARS AGO

UPTOWN

THE phone rang, and rang, and rang.

“Don’t answer it,” said Marcus, pacing. A dark tie hung loose, unknotted, around his neck.

“Darling,” said Marcella, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You knew they’d call.”

He’d been on edge for days, weeks, waiting for the phone to ring. They both knew who it would be: Antony Edward Hutch, one of the four heads of the Merit crime syndicate, and Jack Riggins’s long-term benefactor.

Marcus had finally told her, of course, what his father did. How, for them, the word family wasn’t just about blood—it was a profession. He’d told her in their senior year of college, looked like death when he said it, and Marcella had realized, halfway through the meal, that he was trying to break up with her.

“Is it like joining the clergy?” she’d asked, sipping her wine. “Did you take a vow of celibacy?”

“What? No . . .” he said, confused.

“Then why can’t we face it together?”

Marcus shook his head. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that I can protect myself?”

“This isn’t like in the movies, Marcella. What my family does, it’s brutal, and bloody. In this world, in my world, people get hurt. They die.”

Marcella blinked. Set down her glass. Leaned in. “People die in every world, Marcus. I’m not going anywhere.”

Two weeks later, he’d proposed.

Marcella adjusted the diamond on her finger as the phone stopped ringing.

A few seconds later, it started again.

“I’m not answering it.”

“So don’t.”

“I don’t have a choice,” he snapped, running a hand through his sun-streaked hair.

Marcella rose to her feet and took his hand. “Huh,” she said, holding it up between them. “I don’t see any strings.”

Marcus pulled free. “You don’t know what it’s like, having other people decide who you are, what you’re going to be.”

Marcella resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course she knew. People looked at her and assumed a whole lot. That a pretty face meant an empty head, that a girl like her was only after an easy life, that she would be satisfied with luxury, instead of power—as if you couldn’t want both.

Her own mother had told her to aim high, that she should never sell herself cheap. (The correct saying, of course, was short. As in, don’t sell yourself short.) But Marcella hadn’t sold herself cheap or short. She’d chosen Marcus Riggins. And he was going to choose this.

The phone rang on, and on.

“Take the call.”

“If I take the call,” he said, “I take the job. If I take the job, I’m in. There’s no getting back out.”

Marcella caught him by the shoulder, interrupting the pendulum of his movement. He faltered, drew up short as she wrapped her fingers around his silk tie, and pulled him toward her. Something flashed in Marcus’s eyes, anger, and fear, and violence, and Marcella knew that he could do this job, and do it well. Marcus wasn’t weak, wasn’t soft. He was simply stubborn. Which was why he needed her. Because where he saw a trap, she saw an opportunity.

“What do you want to be?” asked Marcella. The same question he’d asked her the night they met. One Marcus himself had never answered.

Now he looked at her, his eyes dark. “I want to be more.”

“Then be more. That,” she said, turning his face toward the phone, “is just a door. A way in.” Her nails scraped against his cheek. “You want to be more, Marcus? Prove it. Pick up the phone and walk through the goddamn door.”

The ringing stopped, and in the silence she could hear her quickening pulse, and his unsteady breath. The moment stretched taut, and then collapsed. They collided, Marcus kissing her, hard, and deep, one hand already sliding between her legs, the other dragging the nails from his cheek. He spun her around, bent her over the bed.

He was already hard.

She was already wet.

Marcella stifled a gasp of pleasure, triumph, as he pressed himself against her—into her—her fingers knotting in the sheets, her gaze drifting to the cell phone beside her on the bed.

And when it rang again, Marcus answered.

IV

FOUR WEEKS AGO

THE HEIGHTS

MARCELLA longed for a hot shower, but the first touch of water sent a searing pain over her tender skin, so instead she settled for a damp cloth, drawing lukewarm water from the bathroom sink.

The edges of her hair were singed beyond repair, so she took up the sharpest scissors she could find and started to cut. When she was done, her black waves ended just above her shoulders. A thick coil swept across her brow, hiding the fresh scar above her left temple and framing her face.

Her face, which had miraculously escaped the worst of the fight and the fire. She brushed mascara along her lashes and painted a fresh coat of red on her lips. Pain followed every gesture—each stretch and bend of tender skin a reminder in the shape of her husband’s name—but through it all, Marcella’s mind felt . . . quiet. Smooth. Silk ribbons, instead of knotted rope.

She returned to the closet, running her fingers lightly along the symphony of clothes that made up her wardrobe. A small, vindictive part of her wanted to choose something revealing, to put her injuries on display, but she knew better. Weakness was a thing best concealed. In the end she chose a pair of elegant black slacks, a silk blouse that wrapped around her sleek frame, and a pair of black stilettos, the heels as thin and chrome as switchblades.

She was just fastening the buckles on her second shoe when a newscaster’s voice rose from the television in the other room.

“New developments in the case of the house fire that raged through the upscale Brighton development last week . . .”

She stepped out into the hall in time to see her own face on the screen.

“. . . resulting in the death of Marcella Renee Riggins . . .”

She’d been right, then. The police obviously wanted Marcus to believe she was dead. Which was probably the only reason she wasn’t. Marcella took up the remote, turning up the volume as the camera cut to a shot of their house, the exterior charred and smoldering.

“Officials have yet to determine the cause of the fire, but it’s believed to be an accident.”

Marcella’s grip tightened on the remote as the camera cut to a shot of Marcus running his hands through his hair, the picture of grief.

“Husband Marcus Riggins admitted to police that the two had quarreled earlier that night, and that his wife was prone to outbursts, but adamantly denied the suggestion that she’d set the fire herself, saying that she had never been violent or destructive—”

The remote crumbled in her hand, batteries liquefying as the plastic warped and melted.

Marcella let the mess fall from her fingers, and went to find her husband.

V

THREE YEARS AGO

DOWNTOWN MERIT

MARCELLA had always liked the National building. It was a feat of glass and steel, a thirty-story prism at the heart of the city. She’d coveted it, the way one might a diamond, and Tony Hutch owned the whole thing, from the marble lobby all the way to the rooftop gardens where he threw his parties.

They stepped through the front doors arm in arm, Marcus in a trim black suit, Marcella in a gold dress. She caught sight of a plainclothes cop lounging in the lobby, and shot him a toying wink. Half the Merit PD was in Hutch’s pocket. The other half couldn’t get close enough to do a damn thing.

The inside of the elevator was polished to a high shine, and as it rose, Marcella leaned against Marcus and considered their reflection. She loved the way they looked together. She loved his strong jaw and his rough hands, loved his steely blue eyes and the way he moaned her name. They were partners in crime. A perfect pair.

“Hello, handsome,” she said, catching his eye.

He smiled. “Hello, gorgeous.”

Yes, she loved her husband.

Probably more than she should.

The elevator doors opened onto a rooftop covered in lights, and music, and laughter. Hutch always knew how to throw a party. Gauzy canopies and sofas piled with cushions, low gold-and-glass tables, servers slipping through the crowd with champagne flutes and canapés, but what drew Marcella’s eye more than any of it was the city beyond. The view was incredible, the National high enough up that it seemed to look down on all of Merit.

Marcus led her through the bustling crowd.

As they moved, she felt the eyes of every man, and half the women, slide over her. Marcella’s dress—made of a thousand pale gold scales—hugged her every curve and shimmered with each step. Her heels and nails were the same pale gold, as was the matching net of wire woven through her black hair, lacing tiny white-gold beads through the glossy updo. The only spots of color were her eyes, a vivid blue framed by black lashes, and her lips, which she’d painted crimson.

Marcus had told her to dress up.

“What’s the point of having beautiful things,” he’d said, “if you don’t put them on display?”

Now he led her to the very center of the roof, to the marble star inlaid in the floor where the boss himself was holding court.

Antony Hutch.

He wasn’t unattractive—lean and strong, with warm brown hair and a constant summer tan—but there was something about him that made Marcella’s skin crawl.