Chapter 4

In the fourth month at the company, my supervisor called me back to the office one night at ten and handed me a folder.

"Hazel, take this to Mr. Sterling for me."

I took it, confused. It wasn't my place to be delivering documents to Adrian personally at this hour.

Her tone was loaded. "You'll understand when you get there."

I followed her directions to a private members' club called Mercer Club. When I reached the door of the private suite, I could hear Adrian's voice.

Just as I was about to push it open, Sienna's laugh sliced through the air.

"That video of Hazel getting chewed out like a dog in front of everyone — it's hilarious!"

"Adrian, tell me what else you did to her — besides sending her to a factory two hundred miles out and keeping her up all night on calls?"

A chill cut through me.

Adrian's voice drifted out — not the polite, careful tone I knew, but something mocking. Contemptuous. Careless.

"What's the rush? That supervisor I handed her to is the nastiest, most impossible person in the company. She'll crack eventually."

"Besides, this is just taking the edge off for you. Once her internship ends, I'll make sure her completion paperwork gets stuck, and she won't graduate."

Sienna sounded deflated. "But Adrian — the Sterlings are throwing your engagement party on Hazel's twenty-first birthday..."

Adrian's voice went flat. "So on that day, I'll have her framed for leaking confidential company files. In front of every old-money family in Ashford, at our own engagement. She'll be finished. I'll use it to break off the engagement on the spot, and she'll never show her face in this city again. Happy now?"

Through the half-open door, Sienna was nestled sweetly against him.

"Mom and Dad and Julian never liked her anyway. Why don't you play along — be sweet to her. She'll fall for you, hard. And on the day of the engagement — won't that just be the show of the century?"

"I'll make sure she knows. She can have Harrington blood — but the biological daughter is nothing. I crushed her under my heel."

"Everything good in the Harringtons is mine. Mine alone."

"Just don't actually fall for her, okay?"

"Relax. I wouldn't touch a piece of orphan trash like her."

I stumbled out and collided with someone in the hallway.

"Watch where you're going! Do you even know who you just walked into?"

Someone was snapping at me. Through blurred vision, I finally looked up and saw the face — sharp, angular, unforgettable.

"Damien..."

It was like running into a long-lost relative. My throat closed.

Through the tears, Damien Sterling — in a black casual suit — frowned down at my red-rimmed eyes.

"Who the hell made you cry like this?"

Damien. Adrian's uncle.

Alistair Sterling's youngest and most favored son. The heir the family actually counted on. And famously, unforgivably reckless.

Eight years ago, a racing accident nearly killed him, and Alistair shipped him off to the family's country estate in Wickham to recover.

And in Wickham, he'd met me — a lonely little girl.

The Christmas Eve I was twelve, the whole mansion was empty. Everyone at the Harringtons had forgotten about me.

I'd been sitting alone in the garden all day, waiting for someone to come get me for the holidays. No one ever did.

It was freezing. Then Damien — in just a thin sweater — had walked over from the estate across the way. He'd planted himself in front of me, that cocky face of his wearing some forced-casual expression.

"Hey, kid. I've got too much food over at my place. Come help me finish it. If you do, I'll even throw in a Christmas gift."

And for the eight years I spent forgotten in Wickham, every Christmas Eve — there was always Damien.