Chapter 2

Ten years ago. I was fifteen, and my life was a gilded cage of galas, charity balls, and expectations. The biggest expectation was that I, Madisyn Clarkson, heiress to the Clarkson oil fortune, would one day marry Ryan Lester, the golden son of the Lester political dynasty.

Everyone thought I wanted it. I had a teenage crush on him, a foolish infatuation with his perfect smile and public charm. He was the boy everyone wanted, so I thought I should want him too.

That all changed the night of the Lester Family Foundation gala.

It was a sweltering Texas evening. My father and I arrived at the opulent Austin hotel, and the first thing I saw was a boy. He couldn't have been older than me, standing alone outside the velvet ropes, holding a hand-painted sign that read: "SENATOR LESTER, A SON' S MEMORY DESERVES MORE THAN A PAUPER' S GRAVE."

He was skinny, defiant, and his eyes burned with a righteous fury that captivated me instantly. And he looked so much like Ryan. The same bone structure, the same dark hair, the same piercing blue eyes. But where Ryan' s features were smooth and practiced, this boy' s were raw, edged with hardship.

He was Ethan Lester. The family' s dirty little secret.

His mother, a former campaign aide, had recently died from an illness made worse by poverty and overwork. The Lesters, the family who owed her everything for her silence, refused to even acknowledge her death, let alone help with a proper burial. So he stood there, a lone protestor against a political machine.

I couldn' t look away. I had lost my own mother when I was a child, a sudden, tragic accident. The void she left was a constant, quiet ache. Seeing the pain in this boy' s eyes, the pain of a mother lost and disrespected, it resonated with a part of me I kept hidden from the world. He was fighting for his mother' s dignity. I understood that fight.

Inside, the air was thick with perfume and hypocrisy. The Lester matriarch, Ryan' s grandmother, a woman who looked like she was carved from ice, cornered me.

"Madisyn, my dear," she said, her voice dripping with condescension. "You see that unfortunate business outside? A sad, troubled boy. It is so important for a family to maintain its image."

Ryan was beside her, a smug look on his face. He' d just belittled Ethan to a group of reporters, calling him a "delusional extortionist."

The old woman patted my hand. "When you and Ryan are married, you will have duties. You will learn to manage these... unpleasantries. It is what a Lester wife does."

I felt a cold rage settle in my chest. Before I could say a word, my father stepped in. He was a mountain of a man, an oil tycoon who built his empire from nothing and had no patience for the "old money" snobbery of families like the Lesters.

"Mrs. Lester," he said, his voice a low rumble that cut through the chatter. "My daughter isn' t a PR tool. And frankly, the Clarkson name doesn' t need to be associated with a family that treats its own blood like trash. You want to talk about image? Maybe start by showing some basic human decency."

He looked from the shocked old woman to Ryan. "You' re not good enough for her."

The silence that followed was deafening. My father took my arm, and we walked out, leaving the Lesters sputtering in our wake.