Chapter 1 - THE SHADOW IN THE SILK
The velvet hood came down like a coffin lid. One heartbeat she stood before the gilded mirror of the bridal suite, and the next the world was black and there were hands on her arms, hard enough to bruise, hauling her off her feet.
The wedding silk shredded against the concrete stairwell as they dragged her downward. She tried to scream; the thick velvet fabric ate the sound before it could leave her lips. She tried to twist toward her stomach, doubling over to protect her midsection; a grip like a iron vice pinned her wrists firmly behind her lower back.
My baby, she thought, and the thought was not a word but a desperate, silent prayer. Please. Not my baby.
Men moved around her with the synchronized, deadly silence of a well-oiled machine. A radio crackled against someone's tactical vest with a soft burst of static.
“Target secured. Move.”
They had seen the white dress, the hand-strung pearls, and taken her without a second glance. They did not know the real bride, Vivienne Ashworth, was three floors below screaming at a trembling florist over the shade of white roses, and that the woman swaddled in the silk was her half-sister—the illegitimate secret, the useful shadow kept hidden in the family attic.
Her name was Elena.
She had been useful to the Ashworth family the way a wooden mannequin is useful—to stand under the harsh fitting lights, to model the backup gown so the heavy satin could be altered without disturbing the real heiress.
“Stand still, Elena. You're wrinkling the bodice,” Vivienne had snapped at her an hour ago before sweeping out of the room, leaving Elena alone with the full-length mirror and the terrible, hidden weight of a ten-week-old secret.
Downstairs, somewhere among the corrupt caterers and bribe-taking congressmen, Marcus Whitlock was drinking expensive scotch—Marcus, the golden boy politician with a handsome smile who hit like a hammer, the man who would kill her with his bare hands if he ever discovered the cheap burner phone tucked inside her winter coat or the one-way bus ticket out of Manhattan hidden beneath her mattress.
The SUV's heavy doors slammed shut with a metallic thud that vibrated through her ribs. She lay flat on the cold leather seat, shivering uncontrollably in the dark beneath the velvet hood, listening as the driver shifted into gear.
“Take the FDR up to the bridge,” the leader in the front seat commanded. “The Ashworths will realize she's gone in five minutes.”
Ashworth. The name stopped her heart. These men were enemies of Arthur Ashworth, her ruthless stepfather. They had come to kidnap the prized Ashworth bride, to bleed the family’s real estate empire dry—and in the frantic chaos of the bridal suite, they had taken the wrong woman.
When they found out, they would realize she had no value. And then they would kill her.
A cold steel barrel pressed lightly against her ribs through the silk.
“Not a sound, princess,” a voice whispered near her ear, smelling faintly of gunpowder and peppermint. “Dante Voss is eager to ask your father a few questions.”
Dante Voss. Even in the isolated, abusive world she inhabited, she knew that name. He was the young, merciless head of the Voss Syndicate—a phantom the tabloids could never photograph, a man who had inherited a throne made of knives after his father's violent death. He was currently engaged in a bloody war with her stepfather over the Brooklyn waterfront terminals, and his men had just handed him the ultimate bargaining chip.
Except the bargaining chip was completely worthless.
May you like
Arthur Ashworth hated Elena. He considered her existence an embarrassing stain on his pristine reputation. He would not pay a single dime for her return; in fact, he would consider her permanent disappearance a convenient gift. And Dante Voss, upon discovering his men had snatched an illegitimate nobody instead of the Ashworth heiress, would put a bullet in her heart and dump her body in the East River.
Elena lay completely still as the sounds of city traffic began to fade into the distance, praying not for her own life, but for the tiny, fragile spark of existence curled secretly inside her womb.
