Chapter 1 - The Cold Marble
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Sloan Brennan learned exactly how cold imported Italian marble could be when rich people laughed at her on her knees.
The Caruso mansion glittered above her like a grand, twisted stage built entirely for cruelty. Crystal chandeliers cast fractured light across the dining room. Red wine stained the pristine white tablecloth. Silver knives gleamed in the dim light. Sixteen guests in silk dresses and tailored Tom Ford suits sat around the massive table, their eyes fixed on her as she placed both bare palms on the freezing floor.
At the absolute head of the table sat Fallon Caruso.
He was the most feared man on the East Coast, a mafia boss who ruled with quiet, brutal efficiency. He didn’t laugh. He simply stared down at her, his dark eyes unreadable.
That almost made it worse.
His fifteen-year-old daughter, Valentina, held up her latest iPhone, the camera lens pointed squarely at Sloan’s face. She smiled, a wicked, spoiled curl of her lips.
“Go on,” Valentina ordered, her voice echoing in the silent room. “If you’re going to spill wine like an animal, you need to move like one.”
A few men in the room chuckled, swirling their bourbon.
One woman, wearing diamonds that cost more than Sloan’s entire life, looked down at her plate, too cowardly to intervene.
No one stopped it.
Sloan’s knees pressed hard into the polished stone. The red wine on Fallon’s crisp white sleeve had been an accident—only a few harmless drops. But Valentina had deliberately slipped her designer heel out under the table, watching Sloan stumble with the tray, and then turned the fleeting moment into a grotesque punishment.
“Crawl around the entire table,” Valentina said, her tone dripping with venom. “Maybe then you won’t embarrass my father ever again.”
Sloan stayed frozen, waiting for just one adult in that room to remember she was a human being.
No one did.
Then Valentina leaned down, close enough to whisper the only threat that mattered to Sloan.
“Do it, or I’ll have my father fire you tonight. No job, no health insurance. What exactly happens to your sick mother then?”
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That was the knife. It twisted deep in Sloan’s chest.
So Sloan swallowed the burning scream rising in her throat, lowered her head, and began to crawl.
