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 headline arrives as a push notification at six forty-three in the morning, which is when I'm already at my desk because I've been at my desk since five-thirty, which is the hour I've been starting work since the arrangement with Vivian began, the early mornings being the most reliable period for the kind of focused productivity that keeps the rest of the day manageable.


The notification is from an entertainment news aggregator I don't subscribe to and shouldn't be receiving alerts from, which means someone on my staff flagged it and set up the alert, which means someone on my staff saw the headline before I did and made a professional judgment that I needed to see it immediately.


The headline is: VIVIAN ASHFORD AND RYAN CHEN ENGAGED: TECH BILLIONAIRE PROPOSES AT CHARITY GALA.


Chapter 188 - "Chase Finds Out"