Debt of Flesh

He didn't come for ransom. He came for ruin.Ten years ago, Aria Sterling's father destroyed Roman Thorne's family — bankrupted his company, looted four hundred pensions, and drove his father to a bullet in a Connecticut study. Roman was twenty-two. He swore he'd take everything Marcus Sterling loved most.Not his money. His daughter.Now Aria wakes in a fortress hidden deep in the Cascades. No chains. No bruises. No violence. Just a locked steel door, a bedroom stocked with her own perfume, and a man in a bespoke suit who tells her she'll never leave.Roman doesn't need to hurt her. He has something far worse than pain.The truth.File by file, document by document, he dismantles the lie of her perfect father. He strips her identity down to bone. He feeds her when she's starving. Holds her in the dark when the power dies. Becomes the only voice, the only warmth, the only honest thing in her collapsing world.And when the fortress gates swing open and he gives her the freedom to walk away — she locks them from the inside.Because the man who kidnapped her is the only one who ever told her the truth.And the truth burns.Some debts are paid in blood. Some in money. This one is paid in flesh.