In fifth grade my teacher set us up with pen pals from a different school. Thinking I was a girl, with a name like Misha, the other teacher paired me up with her student Ryen. My teacher, believing Ryen was a boy like me, agreed. It didn't take long for us to figure out the mistake. And in no time at all, we were arguing about everything. The best take-out pizza. Android vs. iPhone. Whether or not Eminem is the greatest rapper ever. For the next seven years, it was us. She's the only one who keeps me on track, talks me down, and accepts everything I am.

I've always been a tough North Shore girl. Fighting is in my blood, survival in my DNA. But two years ago, Caden King broke me, and he has proof of it. Now he wants to blackmail me into doing a job for him. The kind that puts my chance of escaping the North Shore at risk. The kind that means betraying my own crew.

Men tremble at the sound of their names while women run, their lives flashing before their eyes. They’re the monsters under your bed, the boogeymen in your closet. Every living soul fears them. They’re relentless and they’re coming to play. They’re the sons of the most notorious mafia boss, the leader of the DeAngelis Family, and they’ve just set their twisted sights on me. They stalked me through my apartment, haunted my hallways, and crippled me with fear. They led me straight into their trap and captured me as though they had every right.

My life has been a series of bad decisions. Marrying an abusive man was the first... but falling for a dangerous inmate where I’m a nurse may be the worst. He’s brutal, heartless, and twisted. But he’s also the only one to notice the bruises on my skin. His forbidden touch becomes my addiction. His drugging kisses my obsession. After I learn the truth about why he’s in prison, I try to escape, but he finds me. Now I'm his prisoner.

It’s complicated. Two years ago, he broke my heart when he left me to do his father’s bidding. After months of crying, I finally accepted he was gone and wasn’t going to look back. That maybe he’d never loved me at all. I never wanted to see Luca again. Now, a cruel twist of fate has signed me over to him in a heartless deal. I’m his. He thinks he did me a favor, but I feel like I’ve been given a death sentence. He doesn't want to get married because he still loves me. No, he did it for money. More power.

In my dreams, I never escaped the Oregon woods. Life after death isn't easy to accept, especially when I still feel like a ghost. Now, I live deep in the mountains of Montana—the paradigm of beauty. But they are also the home of horrors. Horrors that I only unleash at night. When my pigs are allowed to feast.

I cross the tracks every day for one reason - to graduate from this school and get into the Ivy League. I'm not ashamed of where I come from, my family, or how everyone at Marymount thinks my skirts are too short and my lipstick is too red. Clay Collins and her friends have always turned up their noses at me. The witch with her beautiful skin, clean shoes, and rich parents who torments me daily and thinks I won't fight back. At least not until I get her alone and find out she's hiding so much more than just what's underneath those pretty clothes.

I’m out for revenge. He’s out to rule the world. Kirill and I are as different as day and night. We shouldn’t have been in the same frame or universe. But we meet under the strangest circumstances. He’s my superior in the military and the man who’ll introduce me to carnage.

Triple Falls wasn’t at all what it seemed, nor were the men that swept me under their wing. But in order to keep them, I had to be in on their secrets.⁣ Secrets that cost us everything to keep.⁣ That’s the novelty of fiction versus reality. You can’t re-live your own love story, because by the time you’ve realized you’re living it, it’s over. At least that was the case for me and the men I trusted my foolish heart to.⁣ Looking back, I’m convinced I willed my story into existence, due to my illness, and all were punished.

I've been humiliated, shut out, and gossiped about all through high school. His pranks and rumors got worse as time wore on. I even went to Europe for a year, just to avoid him. But I'm done hiding from him now, and there's no way I'll allow him to ruin another year. He might not have changed, but I have. It's time to fight back.