Chapter 1

The Sterling Family Foundation Gala was a sea of expensive fabrics and fake smiles.

I stood near a pillar, trying to blend into the marble.

Julian hated when I blended. He preferred I was a silent, pretty accessory.

Tonight, my dress was the problem.

It was blue. A soft, forget-me-not blue.

Seraphina' s favorite color.

I knew it was a risk, but it was a beautiful dress, and for a fleeting moment, I' d felt beautiful in it.

Julian approached, his handsome face tight with disapproval.

His mother, Mrs. Sterling, glided beside him, her eyes cold.

"Clara," Julian' s voice was low, but it cut through the polite chatter around us. "What did I tell you about that color?"

I looked down at my hands. "You said not to wear it."

"And yet, here you are."

Chloe, young and vibrant, appeared at Julian' s other side. She wore a pale gold dress that shimmered. She looked like a younger, brighter version of the photos I' d seen of Seraphina.

Julian' s eyes softened when he looked at Chloe.

"Chloe understands elegance," he said, his gaze flicking back to me, full of disdain. "This dress, Clara, is an embarrassment. You look like you' re trying too hard to be someone you' re not."

Mrs. Sterling added, "Some people simply don't have the breeding for certain styles, dear."

Her words were meant to sound like advice, but they landed like stones.

Chloe smiled, a small, sympathetic tilt of her lips that didn' t reach her eyes. She was enjoying this.

My cheeks burned. The room felt too hot, too crowded.

This wasn' t new. The comparisons, the subtle (and not-so-subtle) put-downs, Julian' s obsession with a ghost.

Seraphina. Always Seraphina.

His college sweetheart, perfect and gone too soon. I was just a placeholder, a warm body, the mother of his son.

Finn. My son. Even he felt more like a Sterling than mine sometimes.

"Go upstairs to the private suite," Julian commanded. "Change. There must be something more suitable there."

He meant something bland, something that wouldn't remind him of her, or perhaps something that wouldn't make me stand out at all.

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.

This was it.

The final cut. The one that severed the last, frayed thread holding me to this life.

I had been quiet, observant, and submissive for years.

Years in the foster system taught me to be small, to not make waves.

Years with Julian reinforced it.

But something inside me, a tiny, resilient seed, had finally cracked open.

I wouldn't go upstairs and change.

I would leave.