Chase Sterling always felt like furniture. The kind you don't notice, the kind that's easy to shove in a corner and forget. He was used to it: people looked right through him, brushed him off like lint. But it only takes one phone call to erase a lifetime of being overlooked. When his estranged family meets a tragic end, Chase suddenly finds himself in charge of the sprawling Sterling fortune. Turns out, riches aren't the only thing the family left him. There's a curse running through his blood, warping love into something hungry and dangerous, impossible to escape.

Vivian Ashford never set out to blow Chase's life to smithereens. Just one decision (a sharp, ruthless move at graduation) was all it took to set their worlds spinning out of control. While Vivian soaks up the Hollywood limelight and collects red-carpet headlines, Chase slips into his new role as Manhattan's most intimidating heir. But no matter how far they run, something keeps yanking them back together, like a stitch in an old wound that refuses to heal.

I choose the restaurant with care, which is how I choose most things, which is to say with the specific attention of someone who understands that environment is information and that the information a space provides shapes the conversation that happens inside it.


The restaurant I choose is quiet, well-lit in the honest way of places that have nothing to hide and want their guests to see each other clearly, and I have reserved a corner table that offers a view of the room without being in the center of it, which allows for observation without surveillance and conversation without performance. I am there before Chase arrives because I am always there before the person I have summoned, which is a practice I established early in my professional life and have maintained because it establishes the correct distribution of waiting.


Chapter 198 - Isabella's Confrontation"