Gunmetal rain splattered against the hospital window. Lora's eyes opened slowly, her mind a foggy mess. She tried to sit up but pain lanced through her skull. Panic clawed at her chest. Who am I? Where am I?
Faces blurred together in her head, names slipping like water through her fingers—except for one.
"Luke…" she whispered.
A nurse paused. "Miss, do you remember someone?"
Lora's nails dug into the blanket. She remembered Luke—the dark-haired, sharp-eyed man who'd been her nemesis for years in the underworld. The man who once burned down one of her warehouses, who always beat her to the best smuggling routes. The man who called her little queen of ashes with a smirk.
But in all those memories of bloody games and vicious power struggles, she also remembered something else. Luke's unspoken code. His hatred for betrayal. His eyes—icy, but never lying. If anyone wanted her dead, it wasn't him.
Two nights later, Luke appeared in her hospital room, dressed in black as always. His presence was a storm she couldn't quite escape.
"You've lost your memory." His tone wasn't a question.
"Not all of it." Her voice was sharp, though her heart hammered. "I remember you."
A flicker of surprise passed over his face. "Me?"
"You're my rival," she said. "My enemy."
"And yet you remember me." His lips curved faintly. "How flattering."
"I also remember," she said, eyes narrowing, "that you have rules. You don't make accidents. You don't use family. You don't touch civilians. You didn't do this to me."
Luke's gaze hardened. "No. I didn't."
"Then who?"
The answer came three days later.
A hidden recording Luke's men intercepted spilled the truth: her fiancé, Adrian, and her childhood best friend, Mila—the two people she trusted most—had conspired to stage her accident.
They wanted her out of the way. With Lora gone, Adrian could inherit her networks; Mila could slide into her position as consigliere. Together they planned to dismantle her empire and sell it piece by piece.
Luke placed the device on her bedside table. "I thought you'd want to hear it from them, not me."
Lora's hands trembled as Mila's familiar laugh filled the room, dripping venom. "She thinks Luke's the monster. She doesn't know it's us. By the time she wakes up—if she ever does—she'll be nothing."
Luke watched her silently. "I told you once," he said, "your biggest weakness isn't your enemies. It's the people you think are yours."
Lora closed her eyes. The betrayal cut deeper than the accident. Deeper than any bullet.
By the time she left the hospital, she had a plan.
Luke was waiting in his car, engine idling.
"Need a ride?" he asked, voice dry.
"I need an alliance," she said. "Temporary."
He raised an eyebrow. "To get rid of your fiancé and your best friend?"
"To take back what's mine," she corrected. "And make them regret breathing."
Luke's smile was slow, dangerous. "You always were more interesting than your allies."
She slid into the passenger seat. She might have lost her memory, but she remembered enough. Enough to know that Luke—her enemy—was the only person she could trust now.
The war wasn't over. It had just begun.