Chapter 1 - The Shadow of Honey and HearthThe gloved hand wrapped around my ankle with a bone-crushing grip, yanking me out from beneath the shattered wooden counter.
Glittering shards of glass from the bakery’s front display case dug into my knees as I screamed, my voice echoing through the smoke-filled air of Honey and Hearth. Flour, shattered porcelain coffee mugs, and crushed cinnamon rolls littered the floorboards where I had spent three years building my quiet, innocent life.
"Got the girl!" the masked gunman snarled, pulling a heavy tactical sidearm from his coat and pressing the cold steel barrel directly against my temple.
"Put it down, Vance!" a deep, terrifying baritone thundered through the haze.
The voice belonged to Damen Blackwood.
At thirty-four, Damen was no longer the quiet, impeccably dressed gentleman who sat at Table 4 every morning, sipping black coffee while asking about my cardamom bun recipes. Standing at the shattered entrance of my bakery, flanked by eight armed operators in dark charcoal suits, he looked like an ancient god of war. His broad six-foot-four frame filled the doorway, his bespoke jacket discarded, his sleeves rolled up to reveal dark, intricate tattoos creeping up his forearms. His cold gray eyes burned with a lethal, subsonic fury that dropped the ambient temperature of the room to absolute zero.
Beside him stood Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Vance, head of Vance Security, holding an automatic weapon trained on my captor.
"One inch, Vance," Damen warned, his voice smooth as silk and cold as winter ice, dropping the temperature further. "Move that barrel one millimeter closer to her skin, and I will tear your entire family tree out by its roots."
The gunman holding me—Frankie Vance, the renegade brother of Damen's rival—began to tremble. "She's your weakness, Blackwood! The Marseilles syndicate knows you've been visiting this pathetic little flour-shop every morning for six months! Drop your weapon or I paint the counter with her!"
I looked up through my tears into Damen's eyes. My dark hazel eyes met his gray ones, and for a fraction of a second, the terrifying criminal boss vanished. In his eyes, I saw raw, agonizing, unfiltered terror—not for himself, but for me.
"I'm sorry, Clara," Damen whispered softly, his baritone cracking with a profound, quiet grief. "I'm so sorry I brought the dark to your door."
"Damen..." I choked out, blood dripping from my cut lip where his attacker had slapped me moments earlier.
Pfft! Pfft!
Two silenced shots snapped through the air with terrifying, military-grade precision.
Frankie Vance’s grip on my ankle went instantly limp as two heavy suppressed rounds from Marcus Vance's weapon struck him through the shoulder and arm. Frankie shrieked, collapsing backward onto the flour-covered floorboards.
Before I could hit the ground, Damen covered the distance across the room in a single, lightning-fast stride.
His broad, warm arms scooped me up off the shattered glass, pulling my trembling frame flush against his solid six-foot-four chest. He dropped flat onto one knee in the center of the ruined bakery, holding me tight against his neck, burying his face in my dark hair as my body shook with heavy, uncontrollable sobs.
"I've got you, Clara. I've got you, my sweet girl," Damen swore into my hair, his hands trembling as he checked my wrists, my shoulders, and the burning red mark on my cheek. "No one touches you ever again. I swear it on my life."
"You... you lied to me," I wept, my hands clutching his dark vest, smelling cedarwood, rain, and gunpowder on his skin. "You said you worked in import and export..."
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Damen offered a soft, breathtakingly sad smile, his thumb gently wiping away the blood on my lip.
"I do import and export, Clara," Damen confessed softly, his gray eyes shining with an unshakeable, diamond-hard devotion. "I import order... and I export monsters. And tonight, my queen... we end them all."
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