Chapter 1

"I love you, Andrew."

The words left my mouth before I could stop them, hanging in the cold air of his Yale law office.

Andrew Clark, my adoptive brother, the man I had grown up with, the man I loved with every part of my being, didn't even look up from his papers.

He just sat there, his silence a physical weight in the room.

When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were not the warm ones I knew from our childhood. They were chips of ice.

"That's disgusting, Jocelyn."

His voice was low, sharp, and it cut me deeper than any knife could.

"You are my sister. To even think that way, to say it... you are not the person I thought you were."

He stood up, his tall frame towering over me, a prosecutor judging his most vile case. He was the golden heir to the Clark family fortune, the rising star in the District Attorney's office, and I was just the adopted girl, the charity case.

"I need you out of my life," he said, his voice void of any emotion. "I need to fix this."

He didn't yell. He didn't have to. His cold declaration was worse.

Two weeks later, he "fixed" it.

He called me into our father's study. He stood by the window, looking out over the manicured lawns of our New York estate.

"I've arranged a marriage for you," he said, without turning around. "To a man in Miami. Luis Martinez."

The name meant nothing to me.

"Who is he?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"He's a businessman. It's a political arrangement. A truce. His power for my silence." He finally turned to face me, his expression unreadable. "You will go to Miami. You will be his wife. And you will never contact this family again."

He was exiling me. He was punishing me by selling me off to a stranger as part of some dark deal.

"You can't do this," I begged, tears finally breaking free. "Andrew, please."

"I can," he said, his voice final. "It's already done. You are a stain I have to remove. Now get out of my sight."

He branded my love as a sickness and prescribed my exile as the cure. My family, the only one I had ever known, stood by and let him do it. I was no longer Jocelyn Fuller, daughter of the Clark family. I was a political pawn, a sacrifice for my brother's ambition and his disgust.