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.

Helena has never arrived at my door frightened before.


I know this because I have a comprehensive archive of Helena's arrivals and their associated qualities, built over years of being the person she comes to when she needs someone who can receive extraordinary information without requiring it to be ordinary first. She arrives with gravity. With certainty. With the specific composure of a woman who has been operating at the edge of what's possible for long enough that the edge feels like the center. She arrives sometimes with urgency, but urgency in Helena has always had the quality of controlled fire, directed and purposeful.


What arrives at my door at two in the morning on a Tuesday is something I don't have a prior example of.


Chapter 201 - "Helena's Warning"