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 nominations arrive in the specific way that nominations arrive when you've been told by everyone around you that they're coming and have been refusing to believe the everyone until the official announcement makes believing unavoidable, which is to say: completely.


Best Picture. Best Actress. Best Producer in the first-time category, which is the specific category that Chase's nomination occupies, the Academy having decided that the financial and creative architecture he built around the Stevens film qualifies as the kind of producing that warrants acknowledgment, and the combination of those three nominations in a single announcement produces the specific quality of information that the industry identifies as a sweep, the specific term for a film being recognized across the categories that matter.


Chapter 234 - "Oscar Campaign"