Chapter 5

"You know my tolerance better than anyone, Jake," Chloe said, her voice steady despite the wine. "I survived five years of 'medication' in that hellhole. A bottle of Cabernet isn't going to make me hallucinate."

Jake Tully raised her hands in surrender, though her eyes remained sharp. "Fine. If you aren't drunk, then Rob Stark must be the one whose brain is rotting. He claims marriage isn't a game, yet he wants to marry a virtual stranger? It's the ultimate gamble!"

"Hmm..." Chloe tilted her head, her gaze drifting toward the city lights. "Based on my years of observing psychiatric patients, Rob Stark is perfectly sane. Lethally so. He sat in silence for ten minutes before he spoke. For a man whose every second is worth millions, that wasn't a whim. It was a calculated investment."

Jake rolled her eyes but nodded slowly. "Ten minutes for him is like an eternity for us commoners. So... what's the verdict? Are you going to become the most powerful woman in New York?"

"I should," Chloe admitted, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass. "Realistically, it's the only move I have left on the board. With the Stark name, I'm untouchable."

As her best friend of twenty years, Jake didn't need to hear the rest. She had seen the bruises-both physical and soulful-that the Bishop family had left on Chloe. She wrapped a fierce arm around Chloe's shoulders.

"Then we do it," Jake vowed, her voice cracking with emotion. "This time, we're going to wash away every bit of filth they threw at you. We'll burn their lies until there's nothing left but ash."

Chloe's eyelashes fluttered, a brief moment of vulnerability before her eyes turned to ice. She drained the last of the wine in one cold swallow.

"Jake, help me prepare two more agreements. If I'm going into battle, I need my armor ready."

The Return of the Dead

The next morning, Chloe didn't look like a woman who had just been proposed to by a billionaire. She looked like an assassin in civilian clothes.

She took a taxi to the Bund East Lake Villa district-the golden heart of New York's old money. Even after five years, the air here smelled the same: expensive, suffocating, and fake.

She stood before the familiar iron gates of the Bishop Villa. It was her childhood home, yet it felt like a mausoleum. She rang the bell, and a maid she didn't recognize swung the door open. The woman's eyes swept over Chloe's handmade sweater and faded jeans with immediate, blistering contempt.

"Can I help you?" the maid asked, her voice dripping with artificial politeness. "Who are you looking for?"

"David Bishop," Chloe stated, her voice as flat as a dial tone.

"You're looking for the Lord?" The maid let out a sharp, mocking huff. "Do you have an appointment? Lord Bishop doesn't just see anyone who wanders in off the street."

Chloe didn't waste another breath. She sneered, pushed past the woman's shoulder, and stepped into the marble foyer.

"Hey! You can't do that!" the maid shrieked, her face turning a panicked shade of red. "Security! Get in here! We have a trespasser!"

Within seconds, four massive bodyguards in black suits blocked Chloe's path, their shadows looming over her small frame.

"Miss, please leave," the lead guard said, his hand twitching toward his radio.

Chloe looked at their faces. Not a single one was familiar. Her father had scrubbed the house clean of everyone who remembered the real Chloe Bishop. They had erased her before she was even dead.

"What is all this pathetic noise? Don't you know the Lord is in the middle of a global conference?"

A sharp, shrill voice drifted down from the top of the grand staircase. Chloe looked up, her heart turning into a cold stone in her chest.

At the top of the stairs stood a woman draped in silk and diamonds, looking down at Chloe as if she were a cockroach that had dared to crawl onto an expensive rug.

It was the woman who had stolen her mother's bed and her father's heart.