Chapter 3

Aubrey stumbled through the heavy door, the cold night air hitting her flushed skin.

She was in the Vance estate's sprawling French garden. The manicured hedges offered no place to hide.

The stabbing pain in her right ankle flared with every step. She couldn't walk anymore. She limped toward the large marble fountain in the center of the garden and collapsed against the stone edge, gasping for air.

She reached down, unbuckling the straps of her stilettos, and pulled them off. She dropped her bare feet onto the freezing stone path, the cold offering a tiny bit of relief to her swollen joint.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in."

The sharp, nasal voice cut through the sound of the running water.

Aubrey looked up. Kloe Holder was walking down the rose-lined path, wearing a blinding silver sequined dress and holding a glass of champagne.

Kloe wasn't alone. Three of New York's most notorious gossip socialites trailed behind her, their eyes raking over Aubrey's bare feet and disheveled hair with open disgust.

Aubrey cursed under her breath. She immediately straightened her spine, pulling a pair of oversized sunglasses from her clutch and sliding them onto her face to hide her red-rimmed eyes.

Kloe stopped a few feet away, her voice artificially loud.

"Aubrey! What happened?" Kloe gasped in fake concern. "Did your sugar daddy cut you off? You can't even afford shoes that fit anymore?"

The socialites behind her erupted into cruel, muffled giggles. The hostility in the air was thick enough to choke on.

Aubrey's lips curved into a sharp, bloodless smile.

"My acting fee for one episode could buy your entire closet of cheap knockoffs, Kloe. Don't project your financial insecurities onto me."

Kloe's face flushed an ugly shade of red. The malicious glint in her eyes sharpened into pure poison.

She turned away from Aubrey, addressing her friends loudly.

"Did you guys know?" Kloe sneered. "Her mother was a disgusting homewrecker. A cheap whore who tried to ruin a respectable family's marriage for a payout."

Kloe pointed a manicured finger at Aubrey. "She's nothing but a dirty little stray. A bastard child who shouldn't even exist."

The bomb dropped.

Guests strolling nearby stopped dead in their tracks. Heads turned. The music from the ballroom seemed a million miles away as the garden fell into a shocked silence.

The socialites stared at Aubrey like she was a diseased rat.

The whispers started immediately, washing over Aubrey in a suffocating wave. They judged her blood, her mother, her existence.

Aubrey's hands dropped to her sides. She clenched her fists so hard her fingernails broke the skin of her palms. A drop of blood welled up, hidden in the shadows.

The image of her mother, Lillian, coughing up blood on a white hospital bed flashed behind her eyes.

The urge to lunge forward and rip Kloe's throat out was blinding. But the cold logic of her revenge plan forced her feet to stay planted.

Kloe saw Aubrey's silence and assumed she had won. She took a step closer, her face twisted in a victorious sneer.

Kloe tilted her champagne glass, aiming the pale yellow liquid directly at Aubrey's red dress.

"Trash like you doesn't belong at a Vance party," Kloe spat.

Aubrey's eyes turned to ice. She didn't flinch. She lifted her chin, ready to take the humiliation.

Just as the liquid left the rim of the glass, a massive, knuckle-scarred hand shot out from the darkness.

The hand clamped down on Kloe's wrist with bone-crushing force.

Kloe shrieked in agony. Her fingers opened. The crystal glass dropped to the stone floor, shattering into a hundred pieces. The champagne splashed back, soaking the hem of Kloe's own silver dress.

The crowd gasped in horror. Every eye snapped to the man who had just materialized from the shadows.

Callum Wyatt stood right beside Aubrey.

He didn't look like a CEO. He looked like a god of war stepping onto a battlefield.

His dark eyes were fixed on Kloe, staring at her with the cold, empty look of a man staring at a corpse. The terrifying, suffocating pressure radiating off his body made the air in the garden impossible to breathe.