For centuries I have suffered. Solidified and silenced, all because I failed to destroy what I was created for. Except now, after so long… There is a female. One who always seems to be by my side. Day after day. Night after night. She talks to me. Touches me. Tells me things. She shares stories of a world I no longer know. She is a reprieve from my punishment. A sweet delight. She liberates me from my solitude. But when I rise, my adversary seizes his opportunity, and she's caught between us. He only wants her to get to me. She isn't his. And I'll do anything to protect what's mine.

Ruthless, arrogant, and cold-hearted are some of the words I would use to describe my a**hole of a boss, Damon Everette. That doesn't stop the goosebumps from rising along my neck every time he says my name or the way my pulse races when his stormy gray eyes pierce mine. So, when he coerces me into a fake marriage to uphold his family's tradition, I can't resist pushing his buttons. He's a walking red flag, and I should run the second this arrangement ends. But the very thought of losing him is suffocating—a dangerous addiction that I can't seem to break.

Long have we been alone; without brides, without females to warm us during the long nights, without sweet mates. But we see them from afar, the brides that could be ours. Kept away from us by walls and weapons. Females we long for greatly...obsessively. Human females. And the one with red hair? I want her. I saw her first. I will fight to the death for her. She is mine. So, we’ll come together and make an exchange with their men that will benefit us all. After that? To the winner goes the spoil. Let the hunt begin...but the red-headed female is mine.

The night I catch my husband cheating is the night I stop pretending. I don't cry. I don't scream. I don't get mad—I get even. So I bring home another man—a stranger with wicked eyes and a smile sharp enough to carve me open. I let him have me in the house I share with a liar. A moment of weakness? Maybe. A moment of revenge? Definitely. But he saw me—the darkness, the hunger, the parts my husband hated—and he wanted more.

My innocence was ripped from me one fateful night under the starless sky. Resulting in an unwanted teenage pregnancy and a secret the Camorra must bury. My father decided to hand me off to the highest bidder. The lucky winner? Tiernan Callaghan, psychopath extraordinaire. The Irish mafia prince wants me for all the wrong reasons. Alliance. Money. Prestige. War. I am but a pawn in his twisted game. The man who sits on a throne of his enemies' skulls thinks I'm a weakling. Little does he know, in this chess game, the underdog wins. Because the thing about bad bishops? They protect good pawns.