A ruthless man made me. Powerful men shrouded me. I grew up in a gilded cage inside a cruel world bathed in blood. Shielded by my very own warrior. My godfather. My every breath belonged to brutal gatekeepers who guarded me like the rarest spun glass. Maksim Ivanovich Romanoff’s only daughter born from his forbidden paramour, I thought my father’s weakness for my birth mother could sway him. The way he coveted her could make him more human, more understanding. But I never quite understood the cold, stark truth. A man like him, a man who’d been hollowed out by his own parents and formed in a cruel world, could ultimately only cherish me for one reason… my value to his empire. Nurtured, indulged, and refined until I could prove useful, he never intended for me to be anything more than a commodity between superpowers. An isolated life guarded from sins of the flesh meant to preserve my worth, with my virginity up for sale to the family offering the most advantageous combination of money and power. However, they never considered my isolation in their cage left endless time to study everything beyond the steel bars of my confinement. The more they bound me, the more I could see. Even men motivated by money, by the threat of death are fallible. They falter. Leaving slivers of opportunity They should have clipped my wings. Because the first time those cold bars failed to click shut—I soared.