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.

Dominic calls on a Monday morning, which is when he always calls when he has something to say that he considers serious, Monday being the day he associates with the beginning of productive work and serious things being the category he reserves for productive hours.


I'm back from London and the London footage is still running its second week of coverage and my investors are still doing the specific thing investors do when they're concerned, which is communicate through intermediaries with language that is too careful to be accusatory and too consistent to be coincidental, and the Monday call arrives into this context with the timing of someone who has been watching and has decided the watching has gone on long enough.


Chapter 209 - "Dominic's Ultimatum Return"