Five Years in Prison for Him,Now I'm His Enemy's Queen

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I took the fall for Dennis Henson's money-laundering operation. Five years in a women's prison, where they beat me so badly I nearly lost my uterus.

Before I went in, he kissed the shell of my ear and whispered that when I got out, the entire East District would be my wedding gift.

The day I walked free, his motorcade was waiting. And there he stood, in the middle of it all, draping his suit jacket over the shoulders of a rival syndicate's simpering little bastard daughter.

"She's carrying my child. In this line of work, she won't survive without a clean name. You've already got a record, so just hand over the queen's seat to her."

Every man in the Syndicate swallowed hard, certain I was about to pull a trench knife and sever his tendons at the ankle.

Instead, I brushed the dust off my prison uniform and let one word fall, cold as a blade: "Fine."

I turned around and slipped on the wedding ring offered by the Inner Circle's bloodthirsty crown prince himself.

On our wedding night, Dennis knelt on a carpet of broken glass, a gun jammed under his own chin. "You take off one piece of clothing and I'll blow my brains out right here in front of your marriage bed!"

"Drive. Don't let the filth outside dirty my eyes."

I leaned back against the Maybach's leather seat, my voice raw.

Beyond the window, Dennis was slamming his palms against the bulletproof glass.

That face of his, always so composed, so calculating, was twisted now. Nothing but shock and panic in his eyes.

Nellie Fox stood where he'd shoved her aside, shivering in the autumn wind, staring in disbelief at the convoy of blacked-out sedans bearing consecutive government plates.

"Margot Delgado! Have you lost your mind? Get the hell out of that car!"

The driver didn't hesitate. He floored it. The V12 engine let out a deep, guttural roar.

The man I'd spent five years protecting with my life shrank into exhaust fumes and dust.

The man sitting beside me took his time peeling off the black leather gloves he always wore, revealing a pair of pale, elegant hands.

Christian Finley. The Inner Circle's infamous crown princebloodthirsty, volatile, and utterly unpredictable.

He tossed the gloves aside. Behind gold-rimmed glasses, narrow eyes studied me.

"Ms. Delgado. Right now, you look like an abandoned dog."

He leaned in without warning and seized my chin.

His thumb dragged roughly across my cracked lips, the corner of his mouth curling upward.

"Lucky for you, I have a weakness for picking up feral cats. Especially the bleeding ones."

Pain shot through my jaw, bone grinding against bone. I didn't struggle.

My dead eyes met his dangerous gaze head-on.

Not only did I refuse to flinchI closed the distance myself, letting my warm breath fall against his throat.

"If Mr. Finley is brave enough to take in a feral cat, isn't he worried I'll tear his throat out?"

I tugged at the corner of my mouth. The movement pulled at the bruise on my cheek.

"Lend me your power. I'm taking back the East District."

A low laugh rumbled from Christian's throat.

He wasn't angry. Not even close. Those long fingers traced down my neck, then wrenched open the thin collar of my prison uniform in one sharp motion.

The sound of tearing fabric was deafening in the sealed cabin.

His gaze darkened as it traveled over the scars scattered across my collarbone and abdomensouvenirs from prison. Carved into me by people Dennis's rivals had paid off to deliver their revenge.

I'd nearly had my uterus ruptured during a beating that lasted three hours.

"All right. I'll give you everything you want."

Christian pressed his fingers down hard on a wound that hadn't yet healed.

Agony ripped through me. My whole body convulsed, cold sweat soaking through to my spine in an instant.

But he leaned into my ear, his voice tender, his words merciless.

"In return, from this moment onyour life, your bloodline, even every single breath you takebelongs to me."

I bit down on my lower lip so hard it split, swallowing the pain whole.

"Deal."

The Maybach climbed the hillside and pulled through the gates of the Finley estate.

This was the vantage point that overlooked the entire Capitaland the gilded cage Christian Finley had built just for me.

The car door opened. Two rows of bodyguards in black stood at perfect ninety-degree bows.

"Welcome home, Mrs. Finley."

Their voices rang out in unison, echoing across the grounds.

I dragged my battered body onto the red carpet. Every step sent a tearing pain ripping through my abdomen.

Christian didn't offer a hand. He watched me struggle with the detached interest of a man observing something beneath him.

That was when my old phone buzzed.

Dennis had slipped it to me through someone before my releasea lifeline, he'd called it. The screen lit up with his name. Now, the sight of it was nothing but a sick joke.

Christian raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to answer.

I hit the green button and put it on speaker.

"Margot! Let me explain!"

Dennis's voice burst through, frantic and ragged.

"Nellie is just a pawn I'm using to keep the rival syndicate in check! Once she has the baby, I'll get rid of her!"

I let out a cold laugh, staring at the dried blood still caked under my fingernails.

"Your pawn is carrying your child and gunning for my seat. What do you take me for, Dennis? Your garbage collector?"

"Don't be reckless and marry that lunatic Finley! He'll destroy you! Where are you? I'm sending people right now"

He was still trying to work me with that nauseating silver tongue of his.

"You've got a record now, so just let Nellie have the title. But I swear, you're the only one in my heart!"

Christian stepped up behind me. Cold lips pressed against the side of my neck, and he let out a slow, deliberate sounda wet, suggestive pull of skin that was impossible to misinterpret.

I lowered my lashes. My voice came out laced with contempt.

"Stop calling, Dennis. You make me sick."

The line went dead.

Christian's arms slid around my waist from behind, his burning chest flush against my spine.

"Can't handle it already?"

His long fingers caught a strand of my damp hair and lifted it, his tone dripping with undisguised mockery.

"Your old flame seems pretty convinced you'll crawl back to him like a dog."

I ignored the provocation and closed my eyes.

Five years of hell behind bars had ground my dignity and expectations down to dust.

"Get me a doctor. I need to recover as fast as possible."

I opened my eyes and pulled free from his hold, sweeping a cool gaze across the sprawling estate.

"In three days, at the syndicate summit, I'm going to take back what's mine. Personally."

Christian's eyes narrowed. A thin, derisive smile pressed across his lips.

Then his hand shot out and clamped around the back of my neck, forcing my face upward to meet his.

"Know your place, Margot. You're a toy I paid a fortune for. You don't get to give me orders."

His grip was crushing. The vertebrae in my neckbarely healedcrackled under the pressure.

Tears welled from sheer physical reflex, pooling at the rims of my eyes. I forced every last one of them back.

"Even a toy needs claws if it's going to tear apart prey for its master. Wouldn't you agree?"

I held his stare, a twisted smile curling at the corner of my mouth.

Christian studied me for several long seconds. Then he released his grip and let out a quiet laugh.

"Good. I look forward to the show. Don't disappoint meor I'll throw you right back into that kennel."

For the next three days, I was confined to the top floor of the estate.

A private medical team stood on call around the clock, pumping expensive drugs into my broken body to piece it back together.

Every night, the old wound in my abdomen flared up, the pain so vicious it sent me writhing across the bed.

Christian sat on the sofa not far away, swirling a glass of red wine, watching with cold detachment.

He never offered an ounce of sympathy. Only when I was on the verge of passing out from the agony did he toss out a single, frigid line.

"Remember this pain. It's the price of your stupidity."

On the morning of the third day, the butler delivered a pure black couture trench coat.

I stood before the floor-length mirror, staring at the woman reflected back at me. Pale face. Vicious eyes.

When I changed and came downstairs, Christian was sitting in the dining room, flipping through the morning paper.

"Ready?"

He didn't bother looking up. His tone was offhand, almost bored.

"Let's go."

I pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, hiding the ugly constellation of cigarette burns across the backs of my hands.

The motorcade headed toward the East District. The territory I'd once bled to claim.

Inside the car, Christian handed me a file.

"Have a look. A little appetizer from your dear lover."

My expression didn't change as I opened the folder. Then my pupils contracted sharply.

Inside was a stack of high-resolution photographs.

In them, Tyler Briggs, my most capable enforcer, was being pinned facedown in the mud by several men and beaten.

His legs had been broken. They bent at sickening, unnatural angles.

And standing off to the side, watching with cool indifference, was Dennis's new woman. Nellie Fox.

"Dennis froze every single one of your old Syndicate accounts. Put the word out, too. Anyone who dares follow you gets the same treatment as that cripple."

Christian leaned back against his seat, amusement flickering in his voice.

"Ms. Delgado, you're a general without an army. How exactly do you plan to deal with this rabid dog?"

My fingers crushed the edge of the photograph.

The savage fury I'd been forcing down in my chest was clawing its way loose.

Dennis. You manage to disgust me more every single time.

"Mr. Finley needn't concern himself."

I tore the photographs to pieces, slowly, deliberately, and let the fragments scatter across the cabin.

"When dealing with a rabid dog, you just knock its teeth out."

The main hall of the East District Syndicate was buzzing today.

The heavy mahogany doors stood wide open. Inside, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Dozens of chapter bosses and elders sat along both sides of the hall, arranged by rank and seniority.

The moment I stepped through the doors, the noise died.

Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto me.

In the seat of power at the head of the hall sat not Dennis.

It was Nellie Fox, draped in a designer Chanel suit, belly swollen and on full display.

Dennis stood faithfully at her side, one hand hovering protectively over her waist.

When he saw me, something flickered in his eyes. Instinct pulled him forward a step.

Then he glanced at Christian behind me and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Margot, you're finally here."

Nellie was the first to break the silence, her voice dripping with syrupy sweetness, so saccharine it could rot teeth.

"Dennis said you weren't feeling well, so he asked me to host today's handover ceremony on your behalf. You won't blame me for overstepping, will you?"

As she spoke, she made a show of stroking her belly. The provocation couldn't have been more blatant.

I didn't spare her a glance. I walked straight to the center of the hall, my gaze cutting across every elder seated along the sides.

These men. Every last one of them used to trail behind me, calling me their queen.

And now they sat here, watching in silence while some bed-climbing nobody perched in my chair and lorded it over them.

"Dennis. Where is my man?"

I ignored Nellie entirely and went straight for him.

Dennis couldn't meet my eyes. He cleared his throat.

"Margot, Tyler didn't know his place. He disrespected Nellie. I just had someone teach him a small lesson."

"A little discipline?"

I let out a cold laugh and closed the distance between us, one step at a time.

"You shattered both his legs. You call that a little discipline?" My voice cut through the hall. "Dennis, have you forgotten who took a bullet for you when your enemies had you cornered?"

Several of the senior syndicate bosses lowered their heads in shame.

Being called out in front of everyone was more than Dennis could stomach. His face twisted, and he snarled through clenched teeth.

"Margot! Don't push your luck! You're a convicted felon nowyou can't touch a single piece of business in the East District!"

He jabbed a finger toward Nellie's belly, using it like a shield for his betrayal.

"Nellie comes from a clean background, and she's carrying my child. She's the only one who can sit in that chair and keep the brothers fed!"

"A clean background?"

I couldn't help it. I laughedloud and sharp.

"She's an illegitimate daughter planted here by a rival syndicate, and you're standing there talking to me about clean backgrounds? Dennis, is your skull packed with nothing but shit?"

"Shut your mouth!"

Nellie shot to her feet, finger stabbing toward my face.

"You worthless convict! Dennis doesn't want you anymorewhat are you doing crawling back here like you have no shame? Someone get her out of here!"

A handful of Dennis's new inner circle closed in immediately, weapons already in hand.

I didn't move. Didn't even lift my gaze.

Christian's men drew their guns in the same breath. Cold, black muzzles leveled directly at the skulls of every last one of those lackeys.

The air in the hall turned to ice.

Dennis pulled Nellie behind him, glaring at Christian.

"Christian Finley! This is the East District! You think you can pull this here?"

Christian adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses with deliberate slowness. A mocking smile curled at the corner of his lips.

"Mr. Henson, I'm simply accompanying my wife to collect what belongs to her. As for your little crewthey're not worth dirtying my hands over."

He turned to me, amusement glinting in his eyes.

"Margot. Get it done. Don't waste time."

I drew a deep breath, forcing down the pain churning in my abdomen, and pulled a battered flash drive from my pocket.

"Dennis, you really thought freezing the accounts and crippling Tyler would be enough to make me bow?"

I held the flash drive high, my voice dropping to something glacial.

"Every dirty transaction you've run for the past five years is on this drive. Every last entry in your secret ledger. One press of a button, and you and your pristine little wife can spend the rest of your lives behind bars."

The color drained from Dennis's face the instant he saw it.

He knew exactly what was on that drive.

Before I went to prison, I'd made a contingencyquietly copying the East District's core transaction records and hiding them where no one would think to look.

"Margot Delgado! You dare threaten me?!"

Dennis snapped. He ripped the pistol from his waistband and leveled it between my eyes.

"Hand over that drive! Or I swear you won't walk out of here alive!"

The tension in the hall was suffocating.

Every person in that room held their breath, unable to believe that Dennis had actually drawn a gun on the woman who once nearly died for him.

Nellie cowered behind his back, venom glittering in her eyes, silently willing the bullet to fly.

I stared down the barrel without blinking.

I knew Dennis better than anyone.

Greedy. Selfish. But underneath all that bluster, he was a coward to the bone.

He would never pull that trigger. He was too afraid of dying, too afraid of losing everything he'd stolen.

"Go ahead. Shoot."

I stepped forward and pressed my forehead against the cold steel of the muzzle.

"Pull the trigger, Dennis. I dare you." My voice was steady, quiet, absolute. "The second my heart stops, this ledger lands on a federal agent's desk. I guarantee it."

Dennis's hand shook violently. Beads of cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

His teeth were clenched so hard his jaw trembled, his eyes flooded with conflict and raw terror.

"Margot, don't push me like this... We loved each other once. Why do you have to take it this far?"

He was still trying to soften me. His voice dripped with a plea so pathetic it turned my stomach.

"Loved each other?"

What an absurd choice of words.

The old wound in my abdomen throbbed, stirred awake by the surge of emotion.

"When I was being held underwater until I nearly suffocated, where were you? When I was beaten so badly I hemorrhaged and almost lost my uterus, where were you then?"

I advanced on him, step by step. Dennis stumbled backward under the weight of my presence.

"You were lying in her bed, planning your beautiful future together! Dennis, your love makes me sick."

"Enough!"

Nellie let out a piercing scream and doubled over, clutching her stomach as she crumpled to the ground.

"Dennis, my stomach... it hurts so bad... Save our baby..."

Her face was ashen, sweat coating her forehead. It didn't look like an act.

Dennis panicked instantly. He threw the gun aside and scooped Nellie into his arms.

"Nellie! Hold on! I'm taking you to the hospital right now!"

He turned back to me, and the look in his eyes was pure, bone-deep hatred.

"Margot Delgado, if anything happens to my child, I will never let you go!"

I watched their retreating figures stumble away and felt nothing but contempt.

A confrontation that should have been a razor-edged standoff had ended in this absurd farce.

I turned around and met Christian Finley's gaze. Those eyes held a half-smile that wasn't quite a smile.

He'd watched the entire spectacle.

"Your tactics leave something to be desired."

Christian walked over to me, his long fingers brushing a strand of hair from my temple.

"You really thought a flash drive full of bluffs would be enough to keep these people in line?"

I said nothing. I quietly pocketed the drive.

Of course I knew it wasn't enough.

This was only the first move. I wanted Dennis to crumble slowly, eaten alive by paranoia and dread.

"If Mr. Finley finds this so boring, there's no need to tag along."

My voice was ice. I turned to leave this place that made my skin crawl.

But Christian seized my wrist and yanked me into his chest.

He dipped his head close to my ear. Warm breath spilled across the hollow of my neck.

"Margot Delgado. Haven't you always wondered how the police got their hands on your classified money-laundering ledger five years ago? How they were so precise?"

Every muscle in my body locked. A chill shot from the soles of my feet straight to the crown of my skull.

That ledger. Only two people in the world knew the password: me and Dennis.

"What are you saying?"

I stared at him, unblinking. My voice shook before I could stop it.