Elira Vasquez used to dream about a life with no cages in it. No expectations, no debts, no one deciding her worth for her. She just wanted to be free.
Freedom wasn’t an option when her father’s gambling debts landed on the desk of a man who doesn’t forgive them, only collects on them, and Elira was the only currency she had left to offer.
She signed her name away to save her father’s life, and lost her own the same night.
Adrian Voss doesn’t do mercy. He built his reputation on being the man other men fear, and the moment Elira became his to claim, her old life ended completely. New name. New role. A title she despises every time someone says it out loud: Mistress. Not wife. Not equal. Property with a prettier word attached.
Elira spends every day looking for the crack in the walls Adrian has built around her, some way back to who she used to be before he erased her. But the longer she’s forced to live inside his world of money, violence, and unrelenting control, the more she starts to notice the moments Adrian isn’t quite the monster he’s made himself out to be, and the harder it becomes to hate him the way she promised herself she would.
She never chose this life. But she may not have a choice anymore about what she feels living it.