Chapter 2

In the end, Julian paid the ransom — eighty million — and bought Celeste back.

When he ran out with her in his arms, he didn't look at me. Not once. Not a single glance.

But from where I was being dragged, I could see his face clearly.

I saw the look in his eyes. Relief. The bone-deep, shaking relief of a man who had just gotten back something he'd thought he'd lost forever.

I laughed, but it came out wrong.

I'd always known his heart didn't belong to me. I'd known it for years. And still, seeing it written on his face like that — it hurt in a way I couldn't name.

More than a decade of growing up side by side. Of being the girl next door, the fiancée, the wife-to-be.

None of it had left a single mark on him.

The warehouse groaned behind us. The kidnappers shoved me down a narrow side passage as the first explosion tore through the back of the building.

Through the smoke, I watched Julian's back — Celeste in his arms — grow smaller and smaller.

And I remembered my first life.

Julian, soaked in blood, dying in my arms. Begging me with his last breath to bless him and Celeste in the next world.

It was beautiful, really. Just what he wanted.

I owed Julian a life.

Tonight, I was paying it back. To him, and to the woman he loved.

This life, we were even.

And I —

I could finally let him go.

It turned out I was never in real danger.

The rescue came fast. At the other end of the warehouse, Ravenport's tactical police had been waiting in position the whole time.

Which made me wonder — if the police had been there the whole time, then in my first life, why had Celeste ended up dead in an alley?

She should have been rescued too.

I didn't get far with that thought, though, because Tess Whitmore came barreling through the line of officers in full hysterics, crying harder than I was.

"Oh God, Vera, I thought — I thought you were — "

A medic cut the rope off my wrists. I patted her hair and tried not to laugh at the mess of mascara running down her cheeks.

"I'm fine. I'm fine, Tess. Breathe."

She jabbed a furious finger toward the front of the warehouse.

"That bastard Julian — he actually — he actually chose her. For some cheap tabloid trash, he left his own fiancée."

Yes. Julian Ashford and I were engaged. Officially. With papers and everything.

In another day — two at most — every tabloid in Ravenport would have the headline: Ashford Heir Abandons Fiancée to Save Childhood Lover.

It would finish me. I'd become the laughingstock of the circle, permanently.

Because before all this, I'd been the girl who dragged Julian onto every red carpet she could find, who posted photos of him online, who made a production out of being loved by him.

Julian loves me so much, I used to say. I'd invented half of it in my head.

Looking back, it was pathetic.

Real love doesn't perform. The more you shout about it, the more obvious it is that you don't have it.

Tess was still cursing Julian on my behalf.

I cut her off quietly. "They had a relationship."

Julian and Celeste — they'd been together once. He'd told me himself, late in our marriage, one of those nights he didn't bother to hide his bitterness.

They'd been forced apart because Eleanor Ashford refused to accept her.

Tess's eyes went round. "No."

I shrugged. "So — running out to save the love of his life. It's not exactly irrational."

The hallway outside the warehouse was a mess of medics and detectives. Through the crowd, I caught a glimpse of a tall man in a black suit, a silver earring glinting in one ear.

I narrowed my eyes. I hadn't imagined it.

Nearly six-foot-four. Silver earring. The kind of presence that cleared a path without trying.

There was only one man in Ravenport who fit that description.

Dominic Blackwood. The Blackwood heir.