Chapter 1 - TEN MORE MINUTES
At three in the morning, twenty-eight-year-old Nora Bennett was on her hands and knees scrubbing blood from the hardwood floor of Declan Walsh’s Grayhaven mansion.
Her shift had ended hours ago.
She stayed anyway.
Nora worked three jobs because every month she owed three thousand dollars to a lender who claimed her debt never seemed to shrink.
The money had once been borrowed for her younger sister, Lily.
Treatment had given Lily a little more time.
It had not saved her.
After Lily died, Nora discovered grief did not cancel debt. The lender simply smiled and warned that if she stopped paying, he had other ways for women to settle what they owed.
So Nora worked.
She cleaned offices, served breakfast at a diner, and spent nights maintaining the enormous mansion belonging to Declan Walsh—the man half of Grayhaven whispered about and the other half refused to name.
That night, after cleaning blood from his dining room, Nora packed her supplies.
“Ten more minutes,” she whispered.
Ten minutes until the bus.
Ninety minutes of sleep.
Then another shift.
She never reached the door.
Her shoe caught a forgotten wine glass in the library. Glass shattered beneath her, and Nora collapsed onto the rug.
She told herself she would close her eyes for one second.
Darkness swallowed her.
Declan found her there.
The ruthless man everyone feared could have summoned a guard or ordered another employee to remove her.
Instead, he lifted her himself.
What disturbed him was not that she had collapsed.
It was how little she weighed.
Declan carried Nora upstairs and placed her in a guest bed.
Then something unexpected happened.
Still unconscious, Nora reached out.
Her fingers closed around his wrist.
Declan stared at her hand.
He could have pulled free.
He didn’t.
“Ten minutes,” he muttered, dragging a chair beside the bed.
Hours passed.
When Nora finally woke, morning light was slipping through expensive curtains.
Her fingers were still wrapped around Declan’s hand.
And the most feared man in Grayhaven was still sitting beside her.
Before either could speak, someone pounded on the bedroom door.
“Boss.”
Declan’s expression hardened.
“What?”
The voice outside hesitated.
“We found something in her coat.”
Nora went cold.
Declan slowly looked at her.
Then at the door.
“What did you find?”
“A photograph.”
May you like
A pause.
“And you need to see who’s standing beside her sister.”
