Chapter 2

The teller didn't even look up at me when she said those crushing words.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Hart. With no collateral and no steady income on record, we can't approve this loan."

No steady income.

Right, because the job I had fired me the second I ran out mid-shift to get to my brother's hospital bed. I wanted to laugh, except none of this was funny, so I just nodded, thanked her, and got out before I fell apart at her desk.

That makes it four banks now, four polite refusals wearing that same rehearsed sympathy, delivered right before the door quietly closes in my face.

By the time I reached the fifth place, I'd stopped expecting anything different. This time it's a payday loan shop with a flickering sign and a security guard who looked like he'd seen every kind of desperate walk through that door before me.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I know what places like this charge. I know exactly what it costs to sign your name to something when you've got nothing left to lose and everything left to lose at the same time.

Twenty-eight days left now. I'm still standing there trying to talk myself into going in when the door swung open, and a pack of women spilled out onto the sidewalk in furs and heels, mid-conversation, none of them sparing me a glance.

"...the Ashworth Gala tonight, obviously, half the finance world's going to be there." The taller one gushed, her gold earrings dangling excitedly.

"Please, everyone who matters will be there. Old money, new money, doesn't matter; they're all fighting for a photo with the Calloway boy."

"I heard there would be an open bar, three hedge funds sponsoring it!"

Their voices trailed off into traffic, and I just stood there long after they had turned the corner.

A gala.

A light bulb clicked on the top of my head. A room full of billionaires and investors, the same kind of people my father used to call by their first names, back when that world still belonged to me, too.

Somebody in that room had to remember the Hart name for something other than a scandal. Maybe a debt, a favor, or some scrap of decency owed to a dead man.

I inhaled shakily. It's a thin thread to hang my brother's life on, but it's the only one I've got left.

So instead of walking into the loan shark's office, I spun on my feet, heading home immediately.

I dug through what's left of my mother's things until I found it, a dress I haven't touched in five years, dark green silk gone slightly stiff from sitting untouched in the closet.

I sighed, running a hand on the material softly before putting it on. It still fits, but barely.

My hands shook through the makeup, but I steadied them. I tell myself this was going to be fine.

“It's just one night of pretending, Aurelia, chill.” I scolded myself, staring at myself in the floor-length mirror, but somehow, saying it doesn't make it feel any less like a lie. I left my apartment.

The flashes start before I've even fully stepped out of the taxi.

I froze for half a second, blinded by the flashes from the camera, my heart slammed against my ribs, before I remembered myself and straightened my spine the way my mother taught me a lifetime ago.

Chin up, shoulders back, never let them see you flinch.

Easier said than done with my hands trembling around my clutch the whole walk up the steps, but I made it to the top without stumbling, which feels like its own small victory.

But it was short-lived when stifled gasps filled the hallway.

"Is that—"

"No, it can't be."

"God, it is. The Hart girl. What is she even doing here?"

I kept my eyes forward, my smile pinned in place, and I pushed through the doors before I could hear the rest of it.

Inside, the ballroom glittered with more money than I've been near in years, chandeliers dripping light over champagne towers and a string quartet playing something that sounded uncomfortably like the soundtrack to a life I used to have.

I stood by the entrance, inhaling deeply. “This is going to be fun.”

I moved through the crowd looking for a familiar face, someone who might remember my father fondly enough to help me now that I needed it the most.

Oh, I found them, but none of them remembered me fondly.

"Mr. Ellison, hi, I don't know if you remember me, Franklin Hart's daughter—"

His smile dropped so fast it's almost funny. "I'm sure you understand I have other guests to attend to." He excused himself.

I tried three more times, and each retreat comes faster than the last, until by the fourth I stopped introducing myself by name at all. I just ended up drifting toward the bar instead, mostly because it's the one place in the room where nobody's actively avoiding eye contact with me.

"Rough night?" The bartender slides a glass toward me that I never ordered.

"You have no idea." I sighed, taking a sip anyway. It burned down my throat, which feels about right tonight. "I used to know half the people in this room. Now I can't get one of them to look at me longer than it takes to walk away."

"People are like that." He shrugged, wiping down the counter, unbothered in the way of someone who's heard every version of this story the bar's ever hosted.

"Money's got a short memory."

I laughed, but it came out wrong; it was more breathy than sound, and I thought about Jace lying in that hospital bed, about twenty-eight days ticking down, whether I find a miracle or not, about every single door in this city closing on me one after another.

My heart cracked open in my chest, hot and humiliating, right as I'm blinking back the sting behind my eyes.

That's when I saw him.

Across the room, head above most of the crowd, wearing a dark suit fitted like it was sewn onto him by someone who worshipped money for a living.

People part around him the way they part around gravity, laughing too loud at whatever he was saying, and angling for a scrap of his attention like it's oxygen. My lips curled in distaste.

Rhys Calloway.

The man who bought my father's company for pennies while it was still bleeding out.

The very man whose empire grew fat on the wreckage of everything my family used to be.

Something in me went very still, and then it detonated altogether.

I set the glass down hard enough that it nearly cracked, and for the first time all night, I wasn't thinking about begging anyone for anything.

I was thinking about strangling someone.

That asshole!