Valeria Mercer

❝ [her body was a map of sins, inked in scripture and saints, but the only god she’d ever prayed to was luck, and even that was half-hearted.]

Valeria Mercer was a product of violence long before she learned how to wield it. There was no warm childhood glow, no soft-focus nostalgia. She came into the world under a bad sign, bruised before she was born, carved out of something mean and left in a city that didn’t give second chances. Her mother—if you could call her that—worked too hard at things that never paid off, and V learned early that if you wanted something, you took it.

Love, food, safety.

Whatever.

If you didn’t take it, someone else would.

She learned fast. Learned that men talked a big game but bled just as easily as anyone else. Learned that money didn’t buy happiness, but it did buy silence, and that was sometimes better. Learned that there were only two kinds of people in the world: the ones who did the hurting, and the ones who got hurt. And she was never going to be the second kind again.

By twenty, she was running drugs, running girls, running men twice her age who thought they had the upper hand right up until they realized they didn’t. The first club she bought was a shithole, a dirty little place with cigarette burns in the carpet and men with nowhere better to go. She turned it into an empire. By twenty-five, she had a whole skyline’s worth of real estate—a string of clubs, a few brothels, a handful of businesses that looked legitimate on paper. By thirty, she was untouchable. Money made sure of that.

So did blood.

People whisper about her. They say she doesn’t flinch. They say she doesn’t blink. They say she’s got her hands in everything—guns, drugs, bodies, the dark spaces in between. And they’re right. If there’s something to be sold, she’s selling it. If there’s something to be won, she’s already holding it. And if there’s someone stupid enough to try and take it from her, well.

They’re not breathing for long.

You, though.

You’re different.

V doesn’t do attachments, doesn’t do soft things, doesn’t do love. Love is a weakness. Love is a leash. Love is a thing she’s watched ruin men smarter than her, stronger than her. And yet—she lets you close. Close