Chapter 2

When I walked back into my dorm room wearing the necklace, my roommate, Lily Whitman, snapped.

"The Azure Tear?" she gasped, her face twisting with a toxic cocktail of shock, jealousy, and pure rage. "Benjamin promised me he was going to win that for me at the auction! How the hell is it on your neck?"

Did I mention Lily was Benjamin's younger sister? Yeah. We were roommates.

Lily wasn't stupid. Over the past two years, she had constantly tried to poke holes in my "rich girl" facade.

But my act was ironclad. She could never find a single flaw.

It didn't help that during the campus-wide beauty rankings, I took second place, and Lily took third.

The girl who took first place mysteriously withdrew from school and moved abroad after Lily's family applied some heavy corporate pressure to her parents. So, by default, I was now number one.

Lily tried to pull the same intimidation tactics on me, but they never worked because her own brother was secretly running interference, shielding me from her sabotage.

Lily had no idea Benjamin was obsessed with me. After her threats failed, she assumed my family's background was too powerful to mess with and backed off.

But this was a declaration of war.

Lily had been whining about the Azure Tear for six months.

She had bragged to all her sorority sisters that it was going to be her twentieth birthday present. And now, here it was, resting against the collarbone of the girl she despised most in the world.

She was furious.

But I was absolutely thrilled.

Indeed, I did it on purpose. I knew Benjamin was planning to buy it for her birthday.

All I did was "accidentally" leave a photo of the necklace pulled up on my phone. Benjamin assumed I wanted it and outbid everyone at the gala to hand it to me.

If you want to court a genuine heiress with beauty, brains, and real clout, a little financial firepower is the bare minimum to get in the game.

Lily let out a frustrated shriek, stomped her boot against the floor, and stormed out of the dorm room.

The first rule of mimicking high society was crafting the perfect mask.

My mask was the aloof, brilliant, untouchable heiress with a mysterious background.

I politely kept everyone at arm's length. Getting too close to people meant answering questions, and answering questions meant leaving a trail of lies that could be fact-checked.

But I made sure to be "spotted" at the right places. I would casually run into heirs and socialites in the lobby of the Four Seasons or at Michelin-starred restaurants, as if dropping a thousand dollars on a lunch were just my baseline reality.

The problem? Maintaining that reality required actual cash.

As the top art student at Westbridge University, I couldn't exactly take a part-time job at Starbucks. So, I operated in the shadows.

I created multiple anonymous profiles on digital art commission platforms. Thanks to my talent, I quickly became one of the most sought-after illustrators on the internet. The massive payouts from my anonymous commissions funded my luxury cover story.

"Anna, did you see anything you liked from the fashion show?"

My other roommate, Sophia Chase, walked into the room, casually flipping through a glossy lookbook. Sophia was the only daughter of the Chase family, a ruthless real estate dynasty.

Even my quiet moments were interrupted by these unexpected tests.

As the only art major in a dorm full of trust-fund babies, I had to play the part of the refined tastemaker. I didn't even turn around from my easel on the balcony.

"The spring collections were entirely too loud," I said breezily. "That Hermès tweed set? The sequin integration was incredibly tacky. Dior's seasonal line had an interesting silhouette, but the headpieces were aggressively theatrical. I passed on all of it."

I set my brush down, rubbed my wrist delicately, and strolled over to look over Sophia's shoulder.

"Honestly, none of these suit your bone structure," I said softly. "But I did notice Harry Winston released a pigeon-blood ruby pendant this season. Pair that with the new Chanel cashmere knit, and it would completely elevate your complexion."

Sophia looked at me, utterly mesmerized.

I wasn't pulling this out of thin air. I had spent four hours the night before cross-referencing dozens of high-jewelry catalogs and even emailed my famous art professor for his opinion on color theory just to formulate that exact sentence.

It worked like a charm. Sophia squealed, jumped up, and threw her arms around my neck. She immediately pulled out her phone and called her personal shopper to have the ruby necklace overnighted to the dorm.

I watched her drop a great fortune without blinking, my soul internally weeping with envy.

"God, you really are an artist," Sophia gushed. "I've been staring at these magazines for days, and even my family's stylists couldn't put together a look I liked.

"You have incredible vision. I am so obsessed with this ruby idea. Oh. I have to thank you. Louis Vuitton just sent me their new understated hobo bag. I haven't even opened it. Don't say no. It's totally your vibe."

I gave a helpless shrug. "If you insist. I suppose I can tell my shopper to cancel the one I just ordered."

Before Sophia could start grilling me about the rest of the lookbook, I checked my watch.

I said, "I have to run. I promised my grandfather I'd visit him today."

As I left, Sophia asked, "Anna, do you actually live at Imperial Manor? I swear I wasn't stalking you, but a friend of mine said they saw your car pulling through the resident gates."

I played it cool, acting like it was nothing.

Ever since I got publicly humiliated in high school, my background story had been airtight.

"My grandfather insisted on moving to Westbridge when I started college," I explained. "My parents bought a penthouse downtown, but he hates high-rises. The villa at Imperial Manor belongs to a family friend who is summering abroad, so we're just crashing there for now."

Indeed, I had sold my childhood home and drained every cent of my savings just to rent that villa. It cost fifty thousand dollars a year, and I was locked into a three-year lease.