"Tomorrow evening," he continued, "You'll be pretty and charming. You'll make Alaric believe you're worth the considerable investment I've made in your existence."
"Investment?" My voice betrayed me with its quiver. "In my existence?"
His phone began to ring, and he dismissed me with a flick of his wrist, like brushing away a bothersome insect. I rose unsteadily, the ghost of his grip lingering on my skin. I turned away as his voice suddenly honeyed with the artificial warmth he reserved for his public persona or the so-called friends he had there were as sick as him.
I exited the room without a backward glance, the cigar smoke clinging to my clothes as I moved down the hallway, marking me as his property even when I'd left his presence. I tried to make sense of the dinner he arranged as I headed toward my bedroom.
Darzi wasn't just a surname I inherited—it was a membership card to a world where power never announced itself. Where men in suits controlled more territory than any king, their weapons not armies but whispers exchanged in corner offices and handshakes that sealed fates.
Society pages labeled us "old money." Academic texts categorized us as "industrial pioneers." But in the shadows, we answered to our true name, The Dominion. It was not merely a dynasty—dynasties eventually fall—but a hunger that spanned generations, consuming everything in its path.
While nations rose and crumbled, The Dominion remained, invisible puppeteers pulling strings from behind marble facades, each family claiming its territory in an empire that appeared on no map.
The Kostas owned the seas, not just in metaphor but in brutal reality
Every ship that sailed, every crate that crossed borders, every whisper that traveled over water. Trade, shipping, smuggling routes no customs officer dared inspect. Every whisper that traveled over water belonged to them. The Kostas family didn't just own the shipping lanes—they owned the very breath of those who dared cross their waters without permission.
The Darzis—my bloodline—trafficked in secrets and making inconvenient truths disappear like smoke.
The Manchesters didn't merely influence politicians, they owned their souls. The Voss dynasty controlled who prospered and who starved. The D'Amatos crafted destruction, then sold absolution at a premium.
This wasn't recorded anywhere because those who tried to document it were erased. This system had feasted on humanity since before the first throne was built. Each Dominion heir was branded at birth—not with visible marks, but with expectations of obligation, fealty, and lineage.
As for marriage, wedding vows within the Dominion were contracts drafted in blood and sealed with diamonds, a death sentence for free will if you had any. Bodies became collateral, wombs transformed into vaults for preserving bloodlines, and bedrooms served as boardrooms where alliances were consummated.
My mother told me one thing often. when it came to being wed. To love was to invite destruction.
She had tried to shield me from this.
I could still feel her lips against my temple, burning there like a brand. "They won't have you," she'd hiss through clenched teeth. "Not you. Not Amara." Her voice would fracture, as if she were clawing at fate's throat.
The staff whispered my mother was insane, but I witnessed the raw truth carved into her face. She wasn't mad; she was flayed alive and still breathing, a woman reduced to exposed nerve endings with only me and my sister as the last threads stitching her to sanity.
My father's cruelty transcended art—it was religion.
The backhand at breakfast followed by the diamond bracelet at dinner that weighed her wrist down like a shackle. The men—God, the men—paraded through our east wing, their grunts and my mother's stifled screams and moans leaking through walls as my father watched, sometimes directing them like a conductor before an orchestra of agony.
I learned to sleep to the soundtrack of her suffering; pillow clutched over my ears while bruises bloomed across her body beneath couture dresses. I prayed everyday he didn't pair me offwith a man like him and I hadn’t had high hopes of escaping that fate. My mother had tried that as well.
She died trying.
Officially, her death was a tragic accident.
Unofficially, it was a planned and desperate escape with two daughters that ended with only one child returning home. My father had her empty casket buried quickly. No tears, no speeches, only the methodical removal of an inconvenience he could no longer ignore after he stood in a receiving line and pretended to care.
His mistress had stood beside him at the burial, right where my sister would have been.
Mom had somehow got Amara to safety that night, never making it back for me. I wasn't bitter about it, though. I pictured Amara somewhere with salt-tinged air and no expectations pressing down on her like tombstones.
If anything, I envied the way she must breathe no. Yet I never wished we could trade fates. Especially now. She would have been hitched to someone before I was, and with her wildfire temperament that refused to be contained, I could only imagine the type of man our father would've selected.
Admittedly, he had been right about my advanced age for a Dominion bride. Twenty-eight was ancient by our standards, when most girls were gift-wrapped in white lace by nineteen. In some twisted way, he seemed to enjoy my presence in his household, like keeping a rare bird in a gilded cage—a depreciating asset on his balance sheet that he refused to cast aside despite its diminishing returns.
I reached my room, and the door closed behind me with a soft click that felt like finality. I'd never felt as if I belonged here. I wasn’t sure I fit anywhere.
Now the pretense cut deeper than ever before.
CHAPTER TWO
