Chapter 1 - THE DAUGHTER THEY WERE WILLING TO SACRIFICE
Adelaide Jones heard her own family laughing as they decided which daughter they were willing to sacrifice to a mafia boss.
Rockford Jones was already pouring his third scotch before noon.
Twenty minutes earlier, an attorney had explained that no legitimate bank in Boston could erase the fifteen-million-dollar hole Rockford had created with Moretti money. He had poured it into aggressive technology trades and lost it—or at least that was the story everyone in the room believed.
Now money was no longer enough.
“He wants a daughter,” Rockford said. “Marriage. Access to Jones Financial.”
Her glamorous older sister Chloe refused immediately.
Then their stepmother smiled.
“He didn’t specify which daughter.”
Chloe’s nail file stopped.
Then she smiled too.
“Adelaide.”
Adelaide stood outside the partly open drawing-room doors with a stack of household mail pressed against her chest.
She was twenty-four.
Dark brown hair.
Heavy black glasses.
And a pale, jagged scar running from her left temple to her jaw—the permanent mark left by the crash that killed her mother when Adelaide was nine.
Inside the room, Chloe laughed.
“Send the ugly one.”
Their stepmother joined her.
“He expects a trophy wife. Instead he gets a scar, terrible glasses, and a shapeless little librarian.”
“He’ll think Daddy is mocking him.”
Chloe shrugged.
“Or kill her.”
Adelaide waited for her father to object.
Rockford whispered her name.
But not in protest.
Only fear.
Then Evelyn rested one manicured hand on his shoulder.
“What value does Adelaide bring us, Rock?”
Adelaide closed her eyes.
There it was.
The sentence she had spent fifteen years pretending she didn’t already know.
No value.
Not the daughter hidden from society photographs.
Not the girl who taught herself financial law.
Not the woman who stayed up nights repairing Rockford’s ledgers after everyone else went to sleep.
Adelaide pushed the doors open.
The room went silent.
Her father looked away first.
“I’ll go.”
“Adelaide—”
“No.”
Her hands trembled, but her voice stayed calm.
“You owe fifteen million dollars. I know because I’m the person who tried to rebuild the books after your trades collapsed.”
Chloe rolled her eyes.
Adelaide ignored her.
“I will go so your employees are not dragged into whatever happens next.”
Then she looked directly at her father.
“But when I leave tonight, I am not a Jones anymore.”
Evelyn scoffed.
“Spare us.”
Three hours later, they dressed Adelaide in an old olive-green dress from a guest closet.
No suitcase.
No jewelry.
No goodbye.
Rain hammered the black town car as it carried her into the Berkshire Mountains.
Behind stone walls and iron gates, armed guards escorted Adelaide through the Moretti compound.
At the end of a dark hall, massive study doors opened.
Mateo Moretti stood behind a mahogany desk.
Thirty-two.
Midnight-blue suit.
Dark hair swept back.
Black eyes that looked capable of reducing a man’s future to one decision.
“Jones.”
His voice was low.
“You’re late.”
Adelaide swallowed.
“The storm slowed the car.”
Mateo finally looked up.
Silence.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Twenty.
Adelaide felt her courage collapsing inward.
“I know I’m not what you expected.”
Mateo came around the desk.
She backed into the door.
“My family sent me because they thought my face would insult you.”
He stopped inches away.
Adelaide forced herself not to look down.
“If you’re going to kill me, please do it quickly.”
Mateo raised one hand.
Adelaide flinched.
No blow came.
Instead, his thumb touched the edge of her scar.
Gentle.
Almost reverent.
“Disgusted?”
His voice dropped.
Then he removed her heavy glasses.
Adelaide could barely breathe.
Mateo looked directly at the scar her family had spent fifteen years teaching her to hide.
“Why would I be disgusted by the only real thing in a family of plastic cowards?”
Adelaide stared at him.
May you like
For the first time that day, nobody was laughing.
---
