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.

The hospital keeps Ryan in intensive care for the first forty-eight hours, which is a medical decision and a practical one, and I know this because I asked the attending physician in the specific direct way of someone who is not family and therefore has no automatic right to the information but who has been sitting in the waiting room for six hours and has reached the point where politeness is the last available tool.


He tells me, because I ask correctly and because I am recognizably Vivian Ashford, which in Los Angeles opens certain doors that should probably not be opened on those grounds but are, that the injuries are significant and the prognosis is cautious and he'll know more in forty-eight hours.


Chapter 202 - "Ryan's Accident"