Please don't kill me."

The words tumbled from my lips before I could stop them. My gaze shifted from left to right because I could not bear to look up at him. My heart pounded so hard in my chest, I was certain he could hear it. I raised my trembling hands as his hands pulled fractionally on the trigger. Kaius Marchetti tilted his head to the side, looking at me coldly like a scientist examining a very curious specimen. "You saw nothing," he stated, his voice with the slight inflection of old Italian nobility. "You were never here."

"I—yes. I mean no. I didn't see anything." My voice cracked. "I was just cleaning, I swear I didn't see—"

"But you did." He stepped over the body with reckless indifference, approaching me. "The question is what to do about it."

I pressed myself against the doorframe, sensing the trickle of urine down my legs as my bladder gave out. Up close, Kaius Marchetti was even more foreboding. He stood at least six-foot-three, his large frame filling out the sleek lines of his charcoal suit with the kind of athletic build that spoke of violence and restraint. The scar on his cheek only added to his foreboding appeal.

"The usual protocol," he continued, still in a friendly manner, "is quite simple. Witnesses don't survive long enough to be liabilities."

"I need to live." The words spilled from my mouth as I wept tears down my cheeks. "My mother is dying, and I'm all she has. Please, I'll sign anything, do anything. I'll leave if you want, move to a different state, a different country. Just please don't kill me."

I simply did not care about the crime scene that took place in front of my eyes. I just knew I had to live since I was all my mother had left in the world.

Something flickered in his storm-gray eyes. It was a mix of amusement and surprise.

"Your mother is dying?"

I nodded furiously. "She has stage three cancer. She's responding well to treatment, but if I'm not there for her—" My voice broke. "She's all I have left."

Kaius holstered his gun beneath his jacket. "What's your name?"

"Danielle. Danielle Rossi."

"Italian?"

"My father was. He left when Mom fell ill." I was surprised at the bitterness in my voice. I usually did not harp on my father's abandonment, especially since he had chosen to leave at a time when we needed him the most, but fear had a way of stripping away pretenses. Deep down, even as I tried to ignore it, I was still angry at that man.

Kaius pulled out his phone and made a speedy call in rapid Italian. I managed to catch a few words of the conversation. My name, something about background checks, and the word "immediately." He refocused on me with laser-like intensity when he ended the call.

"You have three jobs," he said. It was not a question.

My blood went cold. How did he know?

"Diner, dry cleaner, and here," he continued, reading my mind. "Ninety hours a week, and you're still neck-deep in medical debt. Eighty-seven thousand dollars last I heard."

I knew that a person like Kaius Marchetti could get information on a person in seconds, but the accuracy of the information left me breathless.

"How do you—"

"I make it my business to know things, Danielle." My name rolled off his tongue like a stroke, and it should have been comforting but instead sent a shiver of awareness down my skin. "The question is, what am I going to do with you?"

He began to pace, circling me in a circle as if I were a shark.

I should run, I should dash through the doorway for my dear life before he decides to kill me, concluding that I was too big a risk. But I also knew that one pull of that gun and I was dead. The plastic sheeting stirred quietly behind him as the dead man's blood continued to spread. I tried not to look at the body, but it drew my gaze like a magnet. This was real. I had just witnessed a murder, and now I was involved in some kind of twisted bargaining so that I would live. "I could kill you," Kaius said matter-of-factly. "It would be neat, fast, and final. Your mother would grieve, but she'd be taken care of. I'm not completely unsympathetic to collateral damage."

"Or?" I breathed, because his tone suggested there was an alternative.

He stopped pacing and pinned me with that burning stare. "Or you could be useful to me."

"Useful how?"

A slow smile spread across his lips, and I found that Kaius Marchetti smiling was in some way more frightening than when he'd had a gun pointed at me.

"I am in need of a wife."

My world reeled. "What?"

"Not a real wife," he clarified, as if that made the proposition any less insane. "A contract marriage. Two years. You play the part of adoring spouse in public, go to some social events, and in return, your mother receives the best medical care possible. All of your debts are paid. You'll want for nothing."

My mind reeled. "This is insane."

"Yes, it is. But it's also your only hope for survival." His voice hardened, and I was brought back to reality about whom I was talking to. "The alternative is still the same."

"Why me? You could have any woman—"

"I can have any woman who wants something from me. Money, power, status in my world." He moved closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne, something rich and subtly masculine that made my heart stumble despite my fear. "You, however, want nothing more than to save your mother and live. That makes you. simple."

"What if I say no?"

"Then you'll disappear tonight, and your mother's treatments will stop by morning." He shrugged nonchalantly. "The choice is yours, Danielle. Two years of your life in exchange for your mother's life and your freedom after that. Or death now and leaving her to her disease on her own."

There wasn't really a choice at all.

I closed my eyes, picturing my mother's frail smile, the way she pretended the pain wasn't agonizing, the way she always worried about me working too hard. How could I ever say to her that I was going to marry a stranger? A killer?

"What would I have to do if I am your wife?" I whispered.

"You'll have to be publicly seen with me. We'll both attend family functions. The idea is to make the world think that the cold-blooded bastard they call Il Diavolo fell in love." His smile turned mocking. "Think you can manage?"

I gazed at him, my mind spinning with fear and doubt. Behind his rough glares and frozen exterior, I detected something else. Loneliness maybe. Or a burden, as if the world was on his shoulders. "Yes," I mumbled. "I can do that."

"Good." Kaius pulled out his phone again. "My car will pick you up tomorrow evening at seven. Bring nothing, as everything you will need will be provided."

"Wait, what about— " I gestured futilely at the body. Was I meant to tidy up the mess?

"This never happened. You were never here." His voice allowed no argument. "Are we understood?"

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.

"Good." He motioned me toward the door. "Oh, and Danielle? Don't even think about running. I can find anyone, anywhere. And if you betray my trust." He didn't finish the threat. He didn't need to.

I was gone faster than he could blink. I left my cleaning materials behind, and I rushed down the stairs two steps at a time. Tired from running, I finally rested against the wall, my legs no longer able to support me. What had I just gotten myself into? Two years of marriage to a man who killed without blinking, who commanded fear like other men commanded respect.

I looked down at my hands, still trembling with adrenaline and shock. These same hands that had just signed my life away to the devil himself.

But my mother would live. Whatever I would have to pay, she was going to live. That would have to be enough.