CHAPTER 2
GHOSTS AND KINGS
Ashton Bass watched her through the scope again. His finger hovered near the trigger — not to kill, but to protect. Strange, and not strange at all. It had always been that way with Lilith Vanderwoodson.
The girl who didn’t even remember saving him now lay tangled in silk sheets and guilt. The same sheets they’d shared only nights ago. The same room he’d left her in after giving her a taste of the life she never knew she craved.
He hadn’t left because he regretted it. Never. He wouldn’t, not in this life nor the next.
He left because if he stayed, he would have told her everything and ruined her before she was ready. He couldn’t — would not — taint what she knew of her family. She wasn’t ready yet. Not to know that her father was the reason Ashton nearly bled to death six months earlier. Not to know that the family she idolized had already signed her soul away and were nothing but demons.
Ashton leaned back from the window and cracked his knuckles. Kai stood in the corner, arms crossed.
“You’re spiraling. Losing focus,” his second-in-command and best friend said flatly.
“I’m focused,” Ashton muttered.
“I've known you long enough to tell when you're focused. And believe me, right now you’re not focused. You’re obsessed.”
“Same thing.”
Kai scoffed. “You sure she’s not playing you? Her father ordered your execution not long ago, and she just… stumbles into your club hours after calling off a power-socialite wedding?”
“She didn’t know,” Ashton said, voice sharper than he meant it to be. Lilith was pure and innocent, he was sure of that. She knew nothing about the underworld — nothing about her family’s dealings.
He cleared his throat, trying to calm himself. “I watched the footage. She found the files, saw Alec’s secrets and… she ran.”
“You still think she’s innocent?”
“I know she is.”
Kai frowned. “And if you’re wrong?”
Ashton met his eyes coldly. “Then I will kill her, too.”
They both knew he wouldn’t.
Because Ashton Bass — king of the underworld, killer of kings — was already claimed. Not by contract, not by loyalty, but by obsession.
By the girl who once pressed her hands against his chest and begged him not to die.
She hadn’t known his name. Hadn’t cared that he was a bloodied monster. She’d seen him in his worst moment and still chose to save him.
Now it was his turn. He’d tracked everything since the moment she left Alec at the altar.
Lilith’s father had been scrambling — not to save her reputation, but to cover the cracks her rebellion exposed. With Alec out of the picture, the Vanderwoodsons’ whole alliance structure was about to crumble. Ashton had watched it all.
Because the Basses and the Vanderwoodsons were never allies. It had been fake smiles, fake handshakes over champagne — silent wars fought in shadows. The kind of betrayal you smiled through… until someone’s blood stained the rug.
Ashton had paid for that feud in flesh. Now he would collect in kind. And Lilith? She would be his alone. He would shield her from what was coming, from what he had planned.
That night, Ashton opened the encrypted files again. They contained routes, bribed customs agents, shipments — and a folder labeled: Event Brides.
His jaw clenched. Of course there was a bigger picture.
Lilith’s wedding hadn’t been for love; it had been calculated. Her father had tried to marry her into Alec’s legacy to cement a trafficking pipeline. Lilith had been leverage.
Ashton felt the urge to go over and put a bullet in Mr. Vanderwoodson’s skull. Clearly the man didn’t know the worth of his daughter — just as she didn’t know the deeds of her father.
She didn’t need to know. Not yet. But soon, she would, and when she did she would have to decide.
Without thinking, Ashton thumbed a message into his phone:
They lied to you.
Your father was never protecting you.
He sold you.
And he's watching you now.
—A.
Across the city, in her estate’s penthouse wing, Lilith’s phone buzzed softly. She sat alone, staring at the message. Her hands trembled; her lips parted. Then… she smiled.
To some it might have been creepy. To Ashton, seen through the scope, it was no ordinary smile. That broken smile said she finally understood. She didn’t know his full name — but she knew enough to be afraid, and enough to be curious.
He closed his laptop, rolled his sleeves, and stood.
“She’s waking up,” he said.
Kai didn’t ask what that meant. When Ashton Bass said something like that, everyone understood: something was going to happen.
Something terrible.
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