Hell hath no fury, she thought, dusting her palms.

Satisfied—no, not satisfied, nowhere near satisfied, but momentarily appeased—Marcella took up her drink and went into the luxury bathroom, where she set the glass on the rim of the marble sink and began to peel away the frumpy stolen clothes. She stripped until she was dressed in nothing but bandages. The sterile white wrappings weren’t nearly as seductive as the gold ribbons, but they seemed to trace the same path across her leg, her stomach, her arms.

Marking her. Mocking her.

Marcella’s hands twitched with the sudden urge to reach out and ruin something, anything. Instead she stood there and took in her reflection, every angle, every flaw, memorized it while she waited for the rage to pass—not vanish, no, simply retract, like a cat’s claws. If this new power was temporary, a thing with limits, she didn’t want to pass them. She needed her nails sharp.

The painkillers from the hospital were wearing off, and her head was ringing, so Marcella dug two Vicodin out of her emergency supply beneath the sink, washed them down with the last of the chardonnay, and went to get ready.

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.”