Burned by Poison, Saved by the Devil

My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement.

To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia.

It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping.

But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished.

She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug.

She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago.

The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash.

Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name.

She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant.

I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead.

I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye.

"Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you."

Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth.

"Prove it," he growled.

I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip.