PROLOGUE

Taz

A twisted marriage.

A secret inheritance.

A new love.

Will Taz survive her painful past long enough to embrace a promising future?

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The Escape

After four months of starving myself, I wonder if I'll fit. I have to, I reason, as I look at the square box that is the downstairs bathroom window.

Eight thousand and twenty-three square feet encompassing three floors in one of the most exciting cities in the world: New York. Seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms of Italian marble flooring; Brazilian teak-wood cabinets; and ornately-carved, black-iron staircases. The townhouse's luxury is endless in my gilded prison, except for the one luxury I crave: love.

Until I met him, I had never thought of love as a luxury. I breathed it as easily as I breathed air. It was always in plentiful supply - my parents, my friends, my cousins; I was always surrounded by a free flow of love.

So when he came into my life, it didn't occur to me that he wasn't just a further extension of the circle of love I'd always known. After all, he had my family's approval. He was handsome. Successful.

Respected. Ruthless. But the kind of ruthless that was accepted in society. You know, the kind that made people money. Lots of money.

He was everything a girl like me could want. And I did want. Oh how I wanted; more than wanted.

I lusted.

I craved.

I adored.

Him.

I was the luckiest young woman alive. Until ...

I learned to read the signs of the universe. For almost as soon as he appeared, my circle started shrinking. Until one day, there was only him. And love was nowhere near what was in his heart.

Did he even have a heart?

Seven years had answered that definitively for me. Something beat in his massive chest; the chest I'd lain on, loved on, cried on, been soothed on. But nowhere in that cavernous span of muscle was what one would call a heart.

I learned that too late.

Way, way too late.