Chapter 1

Seven years.

I had built this life, brick by careful brick, for seven long years.

In Las Vegas, I was Ava, Marcus Thorne' s shadow, his most loyal dog.

Cold, they called me.

Calculating.

Capable of anything to protect him.

They whispered my name in fear, in awe.

It was all a lie.

My true name, the one that burned inside me, was avenger.

My half-sister, Sarah, had loved Marcus Thorne.

And his family, with their rotten core and dark secrets, had taken her.

A ritual, they whispered. A sacrifice.

Sarah, who sent me money when I had nothing.

Sarah, whose letters were the only kindness in my ugly childhood.

Her light was gone, snuffed out by them.

So I became the darkness, waiting.

Marcus Thorne kept me close because I looked like her.

Sarah.

He was drawn to the ghost in my face.

I remembered the first time, clearly.

I was eighteen, working in one of his dirtier clubs, terrified.

He found me.

His eyes, they didn' t see me, Ava.

They saw Sarah.

He grabbed my face, his fingers rough.

"Any plastic surgery?" he' d asked, his voice like gravel.

He didn' t want to "damage the merchandise."

Then he hurt me.

That night, the plan was born.

Seven years I played the part.

The devoted, broken woman.

I cleaned his messes, endured his moods, fought off his other women.

All because I wore Sarah' s face.

My mother had been bitter.

Our father left her for Sarah' s mother, a woman with money and class.

Sarah never held it against me.

She was older, kind.

Her checks arrived like clockwork, her letters full of hope for me, for a future away from our small, mean town.

She wrote about Las Vegas, about meeting someone.

Then the letters stopped.

The money stopped.

Sarah was dead. An accident, they said.

But the whispers reached me, even in my small town.

Whispers about the Thornes, their power, their strange beliefs.

The accident was no accident.

My dream of finally meeting Sarah, of thanking her, turned to ash.

In its place, a cold fire started.

Revenge.

Patient.

Meticulous.

I would burn their world down, just as they had burned mine.

And Marcus Thorne, the man who saw his dead love in my eyes, would light the match for me.

He just didn't know it yet.

Seven years was a long time to wait.

But for Sarah, I had all the time in the world.