Marcus pulled free. “You don’t know what it’s like, having other people decide who you are, what you’re going to be.”

Marcella resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course she knew.

People looked at her and assumed a whole lot. That a pretty face meant an empty head, that a girl like her was only after an easy life, that she would be satisfied with luxury, instead of power—as if you couldn’t want both.

Her own mother had told her to aim high, that she should never sell herself cheap. (The correct saying, of course, was short. As in, don’t sell yourself short.) But Marcella hadn’t sold herself cheap or short. She’d chosen Marcus Riggins. And he was going to choose this.

The phone rang on, and on.

“Take the call.”

“If I take the call,” he said, “I take the job. If I take the job, I’m in.

There’s no getting back out.”

Marcella caught him by the shoulder, interrupting the pendulum of his movement. He faltered, drew up short as she wrapped her fingers around his silk tie, and pulled him toward her. Something flashed in Marcus’s eyes, anger, and fear, and violence, and Marcella knew that he could do this job, and do it well. Marcus wasn’t weak, wasn’t soft. He was simply stubborn. Which was why he needed her. Because where he saw a trap, she saw an opportunity.

“What do you want to be?” asked Marcella. The same question he’d

asked her the night they met. One Marcus himself had never answered.

Now he looked at her, his eyes dark. “I want to be more.”

“Then be more. That,” she said, turning his face toward the phone,

“is just a door. A way in.” Her nails scraped against his cheek. “You want to be more, Marcus? Prove it. Pick up the phone and walk through the goddamn door.”

The ringing stopped, and in the silence she could hear her quickening pulse, and his unsteady breath. The moment stretched taut, and then collapsed. They collided, Marcus kissing her, hard, and deep, one hand already sliding between her legs, the other dragging the nails from his cheek. He spun her around, bent her over the bed.

He was already hard.

She was already wet.

Marcella stifled a gasp of pleasure, triumph, as he pressed himself against her—into her—her fingers knotting in the sheets, her gaze drifting to the cell phone beside her on the bed.

And when it rang again, Marcus answered.

IV

FOUR WEEKS AGO

THE HEIGHTS

MARCELLA longed for a hot shower, but the first touch of water sent a searing pain over her tender skin, so instead she settled for a damp cloth, drawing lukewarm water from the bathroom sink.

The edges of her hair were singed beyond repair, so she took up the sharpest scissors she could find and started to cut. When she was done, her black waves ended just above her shoulders. A thick coil swept across her brow, hiding the fresh scar above her left temple and framing her face.