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 first story drops on a Tuesday, small enough to seem accidental, the kind of item that appears on the third page of a celebrity gossip site and gets picked up by two or three aggregators before anyone with real reach notices it. A source close to the Sterling family with knowledge of the heir's private affairs. Vague language about "unusual family practices" and "longstanding personal rituals" that stop short of anything specific but point in a direction that anyone paying attention would recognize.


I read it at six in the morning with my coffee going cold on the counter beside me, and my first response is not fear, it's the particular cold clarity that comes when something you were watching from a distance finally arrives at your door.


Marcus is alive. Marcus is coherent enough to be dangerous. And Marcus, apparently, has been paying attention.


Chapter 183 - the threat