Not For Sale: The Debt Is Paid

Seven years. That was the price tag attached to my father's life.

When my father gambled away money he didn't have, Michael Vance paid the debt.

He bought my father's safety, and in return, he bought me.

I was nineteen then. A peasant girl he polished up to look like a mob wife.

I was reapplying my lipstick in the vanity mirror of his armored SUV when I found a diamond choker tucked behind the sunshade.

It was a million-dollar piece of jewelry that wasn't mine, engraved with a date that wasn't my birthday.

That night at the gala, Michael threw his mistress's heavy fur coat at me.

"Hold this, Sarah. Jessica gets hot easily."

I stood there like a servant, buried under the scent of another woman’s perfume, watching my fiancé hold her on the dance floor with a tenderness he never showed me.

When I stumbled from hunger, he called me a liability to his image.

But when Jessica faked a crisis, he abandoned me at the venue to rush her home.

I walked to the nearest trash can and shoved the expensive fur down past the half-eaten caviar.

As the sugar from a cheap candy bar hit my bloodstream, the fog lifted.

I realized I wasn't a wife-in-training. I was a debt that had been paid in full.

I left the penthouse, the ring, and the life.

But Michael wouldn't let his property go.

He cornered me in a parking garage, screaming that I belonged to him, threatening to start a war.

He didn't expect me to be standing next to David Chen, the Underboss of the rival Triad faction.

And he certainly didn't expect me to take off my Louboutin stiletto and use it as a weapon.

"I don't love you, Michael," I said, looking him in the eye as he knelt on the concrete.

"And I'm not for sale anymore."

Chapter 1

Sarah Miller POV

I was reapplying my lipstick in the vanity mirror of an armored SUV, surrounded by twenty armed guards, when I found the diamond choker tucked behind the sunshade.

It was a million-dollar piece of jewelry that wasn't mine, engraved with a date that wasn't my birthday.

My heart didn't race.

It stopped.

It was the kind of stillness you feel right before a car crash, when the tires lose traction and you know the impact is inevitable.

Seven years.

That was the price tag attached to my father's life.

When my father gambled away money he didn't have to the Vances, Michael paid the debt. He bought my father's safety, and in return, he bought me.

I was nineteen then.

I looked at Michael now through the rearview mirror. He was standing on the curb outside the gala venue, his tuxedo sharp enough to cut glass.

He was the Capo of the New York faction, a man who ordered executions with the same casual indifference he gave his morning espresso.

He looked every inch a king.

And I was just