Chapter 1

"Your term is up. You can walk out now. You're somebody, so try to act like it out there—no more hurting people."

The guard at the Blackwell Rehabilitation Facility walked Vivienne Ashford to the iron gate and shook his head at her back. She was supposedly the only daughter of the Ashford family, raised in silk and diamonds, and yet she had, by all accounts, tried to have her own half-sister killed. A waste of a pretty face.

Vivienne stood at the top of the stone steps, sunlight hitting her eyes for the first time in seven months. Grief flickered behind them.

A year ago her father had brought Celeste home from Europe—a stranger at first, then a revelation. That was when Vivienne learned her father had been cheating on her late mother for more than a decade, and Celeste Ashford was his other daughter. Delphine Laurent, Celeste's mother, had stepped into her mother's place in the house as if she had always belonged.

Delphine took her mother's seat at the dinner table. Celeste took everything else—and then accused Vivienne of hiring a hitman to kill her.

Her father had exploded. "Even if you can't stand her, she's still your sister. She's Delphine's only child. How could you?"

She had done nothing. He hurled his phone at her anyway.

"Watch it. Your own man confessed. And you still won't admit it."

She had picked the phone up with shaking hands. A man on the screen, wild-eyed: "It wasn't me. Miss Ashford ordered everything." There were wire transfer screenshots. Forged—but airtight. She wanted to investigate. Her father shipped her to Blackwell instead.

She still remembered the disgust in his eyes as they took her away. "I spoiled you too much. Go in there and straighten yourself out."

Now the cameras were on her. Reporters had been staked out at the gate and they surged at her like water breaking a dam.

"Miss Ashford, is it true you were consumed with jealousy and tried to have your sister assassinated?"

She stumbled back a step. Her head was spinning. "No. I didn't do anything. None of it is true."

"Then why were you locked up? Why is there nobody here to pick you up?"

"Miss Ashford, your mother was Seraphina Ashford, an icon. Doesn't it bother you to drag her name through this?"

Each question was a knife. Her chest tightened until she couldn't draw a breath. She tried to push through and the reporters closed ranks. Just as she felt herself going under, a hand closed around her wrist and pulled her out of the crowd.

She looked up. Killian Thorne. Her fiancé since they were teenagers.

Killian had the kind of pale, sculpted face that silenced a room, and right now his eyes were arctic. He scanned the reporters once.

"This doesn't end here."

The reporters bristled—then went still. A wall of men in black suits had materialized behind him and were calmly confiscating cameras. No one argued with the Thorne heir.

Killian didn't let go of her wrist. He marched her to the waiting car. Inside the cabin the air was thick and cold.

She looked at him. The day she was released from seven months in hell, and the only person to show was him—and he looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. It struck her as almost funny.

He tugged at his collar. His voice was flat. "Standing there like that. Are you trying to make a scene?"

"Or are you going to twist this into another story about Celeste?"

Her heart felt as if someone had sliced it open. It hurt worse than the reporters' questions. "I didn't say anything. I didn't."

He huffed, skeptical, thumbing his phone. "If I'd been a minute later, who knows what you would have said."

She looked at him like he was a stranger. How had it come to this?

Before Celeste, they had been inseparable. Childhood sweethearts. In high school he would skip class to drive her to the coast just so she could see the ocean. He had held her through the worst of her mother's death. They had walked home through golden hours, and when she got tired he would carry her on his back.

They got engaged the week after graduation. They hadn't wanted to be apart for a single night. Then Celeste appeared, and the world inverted.

The Killian who had once been soft for her listened to her father's accusations and sentenced her. "Celeste is gentle. How could you be so cruel to her?"

No one believed her. She begged him not to send her to Blackwell. He stood next to Celeste, ice in his voice. "You didn't think about consequences when you hired someone to kill her. By rights it should have been a life for a life. Seven months is nothing compared to the terror you put her through."

"I didn't do it," she had said, eyes raw. "I swear I didn't."

He had only frowned deeper and hit the gas. "Seven months in there and you still haven't learned a thing."

Her chest ached. She realized the car wasn't pointed toward the Ashford estate.