My boss invited me to the most dangerous gala in New York because he wanted me to embarrass myself. He expected his painfully ordinary secretary to arrive in cheap shoes, freeze in front of powerful criminals, and become the joke of the night. What he didn’t know was that I had spent three years making myself invisible on purpose.

The concussive blast threw me backward, the world erupting in fire and shattered glass.

I hit the marble floor hard, my ears ringing with a high-pitched, deafening whine. Smoke poured into the penthouse. Thorne hadn't come to talk; he had used a breaching charge on the windows from the adjacent rooftop.

“Penelope!” Larkin roared through the smoke.

I tried to scramble to my feet, but heavy combat boots hit the floor beside me. Four men in tactical gear dropped through the shattered window on zip lines.

Larkin opened fire instantly, dropping two of the mercenaries before they could even unclip from their harnesses. But the remaining two moved with terrifying speed.

One of them tackled Larkin, driving him through the glass coffee table, while the other grabbed me by the hair.

I fought like a wild animal. I drove my elbow backward, feeling bone crunch, and reached for the discarded pistol on the floor. But the mercenary was too strong. He hit me across the temple with the butt of his rifle.

The world went dark.

I woke up with a splitting headache, the taste of copper thick in my mouth. I was bound to a metal chair in a dark, damp room that smelled of rust and seawater.

“Awake at last,” a cold voice echoed from the shadows.

Marcus Thorne stepped into the dim light. He looked exactly the same as he did in my nightmares. He pulled up a chair and sat backward on it, looking at me with a mixture of amusement and hatred.

“You caused me a lot of trouble with that ledger, Penelope,” Thorne said, casually spinning my mother’s silver locket around his finger. “You cost me millions in political capital. I thought I eradicated your bloodline five years ago. You’re like a cockroach.”

“And you’re a dead man,” I spat, my voice hoarse but entirely devoid of fear. “Larkin will tear this city apart to find me.”

Thorne laughed, a dry, rasping sound. “I’m counting on it. Larkin Steves is a calculating, brilliant boss. But he made a fatal mistake. He fell in love with a liability. I didn't bring you here to interrogate you. I brought you here to lure the untouchable king into a trap.”

Thorne stood up, checking his watch.

“He’s tracking the GPS signal I left on your shoe,” Thorne smiled. “He’ll be breaching the front gate of this warehouse in about three minutes. And my forty men with automatic weapons will shred him into a thousand pieces before he ever reaches this door.”