Chapter 1 - The Ice in Her Veins
The shears had left jagged, biting tracks across my scalp, but the emotional frostbite hurt worse.
Eight months pregnant, and I was standing in a deluge that felt less like weather and more like a biblical punishment. The limestone of the Kane estate reflected the harsh halogen floodlights overhead, framing my humiliation for everyone to see.
Vivienne Kane stood under the shelter of the grand portico, looking entirely untouched by the chaos she had just commanded. Her black silk dress absorbed the light, matching the absolute void where her heart should have been.
“A girl from Queens will never carry the Kane heir,” her voice vibrated through the courtyard, dripping with a cold, aristocratic venom. “You should be grateful I didn’t do worse, Bianca. Girls like you don’t become Kane wives. They become lessons.”
I didn't argue. I couldn't. My teeth were chattering so violently that my jaw felt bruised. Instead, I pressed my bare palms against my swollen stomach, protecting the only thing that mattered.
Then, a tiny, defiant kick thumped against my hands.
We’re okay, baby, I told her silently, squeezing my eyes shut as the freezing rain washed away the tiny flecks of my shorn hair clinging to my face. Your father is coming.
Vivienne laughed, a sharp, metallic sound. “Roman is a Kane before he is your husband. Look around you, child. Who do you think they will obey?”
She was right about one thing—nobody was moving. The guards stood like gargoyles. The maids peeked through the tinted glass windows like ghosts. They had all watched her women hold me down. They had all watched my dignity get swept away with the trash.
They forgot that before I met Roman, I didn’t know what a bodyguard was. I grew up in a cramped apartment above a discount pharmacy in Queens, raised by a single mother who worked sixteen-hour shifts just to keep the lights on. She taught me that your dignity belongs to you—no one can give it, and no one can take it unless you let them.
By twenty-six, I was managing Bellafonte near Gramercy. I dealt with armed thugs, demanding millionaires, and kitchen fires without blinking.
And then came the night I found Roman Kane bleeding out in my alley.
He was leaning against the brick wall, his charcoal suit ruined by a bullet wound, yet his midnight-blue eyes were completely calm. When I threatened to call an ambulance, his voice had turned into pure ice: “No ambulance.”
I should have locked the back door. Instead, I patched him up and gave him twenty minutes before his clean-up crew arrived.
Months later, I discovered what the Kane name meant: a throne built on fear and blood. I once asked him if he was dangerous. He looked at me with an intensity that terrified me and said, “Never to you.”
Now, piercing headlights cut through the heavy downpour.
The heavy black sedan tore through the outer gates, its tires screeching against the wet gravel before slamming to a halt right in front of me.
The door threw open, and Roman stepped into the storm. He saw my shaved head. He saw my bare feet bleeding on the gravel. He saw the way I wrapped my entire body around our unborn daughter.
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For the first time in thirty years, Vivienne Kane’s smile completely died.
“Lock the gates,” Roman ordered. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a lethal frequency that made every guard freeze. “No one leaves until I know who touched my wife.”
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