“No, James! Don’t listen to her,” his mother yelled. “Don’t let her play games with you.”

“Oh, but I’m not playing anything. I’m not Desmond. I’m offering you a deal, James. If you and your family renounce their name, you become my husband, and you sign a contract on my terms, I’ll let all of you live. So, what do you say? Interested?”

A wave of surprise rippled through the room, and Brent approached me.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, leaning toward me.

“You’ll see.” I didn’t look away from James, who was staring at me as if he couldn’t quite believe what I was offering to him.

“Don’t do it! James. Don’t! The contract won’t be fair to any of us. She’s either going to kill us or turn us into her prisoners or slaves.” His mother would’ve run toward him if one of my men hadn’t stopped her and held her back.

“Well, you can see the contract before you make up your mind,” I said. “You can always choose death later.”

“Okay,” James said. “I’ll do it. Just don’t... don’t hurt them.”

His mother burst into tears again.

“Good.” I lowered my gun and turned on my heel. “Bring them all with us. It’s time to go home.”

Chapter 3

I PLACED THE CONTRACT on the desk in front of James, whose eyes were narrowed at me in suspicion. It didn’t surprise me, though, because if my enemies had offered me something like this, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

He hesitantly placed his hand on the contract and pulled it closer. A tablet with a fingerprint scanner and a digital version of the contract was ready too, because I wasn’t about to sign any contracts just on paper that could be easily lost or destroyed.

“How do I know you’re going to hold up your end of the bargain?” he asked.

“Our deal will be overseen by a third party contractor. They’ll ensure there are no breaches, and everything’s been set up on the dark web, so there are no ways to change this deal or destroy it. The money for the overseer is in escrow and there’ll always be someone to enforce it, so don’t think that once you sign, you’ll find a way out of it. You and your family will have to renounce the Ezzati name forever—no matter what happens—and you and everything your family owns will become mine.