Chapter 2 Chapter 2

Darcie Mayo POV:

The elevator doors opened onto the hushed, exclusive corridor of the top floor. I walked toward the presidential suite, my heart thumping a giddy rhythm in my chest. My hand was inches from the heavy wood of the door, ready to knock, when I heard it.

A woman's laugh. A high, tinkling sound I knew as well as my own.

Floy. My stepsister.

I froze, my hand hovering in the air. What was she doing here? She was supposed to be in her own room, two floors down.

*She's just talking to him about the wedding,* I told myself. *Finalizing some detail.* It was a flimsy excuse, but I clung to it.

I pulled my hand back, deciding to wait until she left. Then Hugh's voice, thick and slurred, drifted through the door, and my world tilted on its axis.

"Relax, baby," he said. "Just a few more hours. Tomorrow, after that idiot Darcie signs the prenup, everything the Maxwells own will be ours."

The air left my lungs. My blood turned to ice. For a second, I couldn't breathe, couldn't think. The words didn't make sense.

Then Floy's voice, dripping with a familiar, venomous jealousy. "I still don't know what you see in her. She's got nothing but a pretty face. Naive, just like her dead mother."

A sharp, searing pain shot through my palm. I looked down and saw my nails had dug into my skin, drawing tiny beads of blood. The pain was grounding. It cut through the fog of shock, crystallizing it into something cold and hard. Insulting me was one thing. Insulting my mother... that was my line. That was the one thing that transformed my heartbreak into pure, unadulterated hate.

I didn't scream. I didn't pound on the door. Some morbid, self-destructive instinct took over. I sank to my knees, pressing my eye to the small crack where the door hadn't fully latched.

The scene inside was my worst nightmare brought to life. Hugh, my Hugh, was on the sofa, tangled with Floy, who was wearing nothing but a scrap of black lace. Their clothes were scattered on the floor around them.

He was kissing her neck, his words muffled against her skin. "I need the Mayo family's backing, not Darcie. As soon as I secure my inheritance, she's the first thing I'm getting rid of."

Floy giggled, a sound that made my stomach churn. "What about that pearl necklace? The one she's so obsessed with. You have to get it for me tomorrow."

"Of course," Hugh slurred, not a hint of hesitation in his voice. "It should have been yours anyway."

My hand flew to my throat, my fingers closing protectively over the pearls. Nausea rose in my throat, hot and bitter.

I stayed there, crouched in the dark hallway, listening to them plot my demise. They laughed about my love for him, mocked my dreams of a family, and planned how they would strip me of everything I had.

The immense, crushing weight of it all didn't make me cry. It did something else. It hollowed me out, leaving behind a terrifying, absolute calm. I felt my soul detach from my body, watching the scene as if it were a movie. Every sweet word he'd ever said, every tender touch, every promise-they were all lies. Knives he'd been patiently sliding between my ribs for years.

Slowly, silently, I rose to my feet.

My gaze drifted down the hallway to a small table set up for the morning's contract signings. On top of a neat stack of folders, one document stood out. The prenuptial agreement.

There were no tears in my eyes. Just the reflection of the cold, dead light of the hallway. A frozen sea. And beneath the ice, a fire was beginning to burn.