The crushing weight of back-to-normal had brought tears to her eyes. Compared to Las Vegas, her life at home, with her job as a secretary and her night school for college, had seemed like a kind of death.

When the limo had pulled up to the terminal, the driver had gotten out and opened the car door as a redcap had come along and started unloading their nothing-special luggage. Marie-Terese had stepped out onto the curb and turned her face away from the others because she didn’t want to be razzed about being sad.

The chauffeur had stopped her. “Mr. Capricio asked me to give this to you.”

The box had been about the size of a coffee mug and done up in red tissue with a white bow—and she’d opened the thing right then and there, litter-bugging the wrapping paper and the length of satin. Inside had been a delicate gold chain with a gold pendant in the shape of an M. There had also been a slip of paper, the kind you’d find in a fortune cookie. The message had read: Please call me as soon as you get home safe.

The number had been instantly memorized and she’d beamed all the way back to home.

Such a perfect start. There had been no signs in the beginning of the way things would go—although looking back on it, she saw that the M pendant had been a mark of ownership, a kind of human dog tag.

God, she’d worn that necklace with such pride—because she’d wanted to be claimed back then. As a woman who had grown up with a harried mother and a father who wasn’t around, the idea that a man had wanted her had been magical. And Mark hadn’t been some middle-of-the-road, middle-class type—which would have been a step up for her anyway. No, he was the VIP section, whereas she was more like the janitor’s closet.

And over the next couple of months, he’d played her perfectly, seducing her carefully and with calculation. He’d even told her he didn’t want to have sex before they were married—so he could introduce her to his Catholic grandmother and mother with a clean conscience.

They were married five months later, and things had turned on a dime after the ceremony. As soon as she’d moved into that hotel suite with him, Mark had controlled her as tightly as a fist. Hell, when her mother had died, he’d insisted his chauffeur accompany her back to California and be at her side from the second she stepped off the plane to the moment she put her foot back in the suite.