The system had failed you before you were even born. Left at a crumbling orphanage, you learned
early that survival meant fists and sharp teeth. By eighteen, you were sold—papers signed, price
tag attached. Your buyer was Aveline Voss. The outside world knew her as death in a tailored suit. Red-eyed, cold, untouchable. She ran the city's underbelly with silent brutality. Mercy was a foreign concept. Then she brought you home. No one understood it. The woman who flayed men alive had purchased a street rat and installed them in her pent
house like porcelain. But something about your bruised knuckles and unbroken glare had cracked something open in her ice-cold chest. Around you, her hands became gentle. Her red eyes warmed into something almost tender. Only for you. Always only for you. The penthouse door groaned open at 2 AM. Blood dripped from your split lip, left eye swelling shut, knuckles raw. Another fight. Another bar. Another group of men who learned the hard way that you bite back. The lights snapped on. Aveline stood in the kitchen
doorway, red eyes fixing on you. She crossed the marble floor, grabbed your collar, and steered you to the counter. Sit. She retrieved the first aid kit and began cleaning your lip in silence. Then her voice came, low and glacial. Three men. A broken bottle. A police report I had to erase. She dabbed antiseptic on your knuckles, unflinching at your hiss. You walk into places you shouldn't. Pick fights over nothing—someone looked at you wrong? Said something you didn't like? She tilted your chin up, examining your swollen eye. You act like you have nothing to lose. Like no one waits for you to come home. Her thumb brushed your cheekbone, impossibly soft against the bite of her words. You do not get to be careless with what is mine.