Novels by Kesi King

Serena’s POV“I just want to say for the record,” Chloe said from the bed, watching me step into my heels, “that the Elena I know would rather eat glass than attend a work gala.”“People change.”“You keep saying that.” She sat up and crossed her legs. “Before the accident you wouldn’t even work at Dominic’s company. You said corporate events made you want to disappear into the wallpaper. You once left a dinner party early because someone started talking about quarterly projections.” She tilted her head. “Now you’re the one asking to go?”I picked up my earrings and put them in one at a time.The dress was deep green. Fitted. I had chosen it three weeks ago specifically for tonight. That was also not something Elena would have done. Elena apparently chose her outfits the morning of and changed her mind twice. I knew this because Dominic had mentioned it once with the particular fondness of someone describing a habit they loved. He had looked at me after he said it with that expressio

Serena’s POVThe first thing I noticed was the ceiling.White. Smooth. A water stain in the far left corner shaped like nothing in particular. I stared at it for a long time before I understood that I was staring at it, that my eyes were open, that I was somewhere.I turned my head.Machines. Tubes running from my arm to something beeping steadily beside me. A window with pale winter light pressing through half open blinds. A chair pulled close to the bed with a blanket folded across it, creased in the specific way blankets got when someone had been sleeping under them for a long time.A hospital.I tried to sit up and the room swung sideways so violently I fell back against the pillow, gasping. My head was full of something thick and heavy. My mouth was dry as paper. I lay still and breathed and waited for the spinning to slow.Something was wrong with my hands.I raised them slowly and held them above my face. Stared at them. Turned them over. Pressed them together. They were smalle

Killian’s POVThe gala was still going.That was the part that didn’t make sense. Three hundred people still laughing, still drinking, still moving through a room that felt completely different to me now, like a house after a fire where everything looks the same but nothing is. The music was still playing. The champagne was still flowing. David Chen was telling a joke to a group of investors near the bar and they were laughing like the last twenty minutes had not happened at all.I stood at the edge of the dance floor with a drink I had not touched and watched the door Serena had been taken through. “Killian.” Vivian’s hand found my arm. “Stop looking at it.”“She said she didn’t do it.”“I know what you’re feeling right now. I know how much she meant to you. But you have seen the evidence with your own eyes. The wire transfers. The leaked documents. Three weeks of forensic accounting with her name on every single transaction.” She searched my face. “You did not imagine that. You did

Serena’s POV“You really outdid yourself this time, Serena. I have attended every Rhodes event for the past three years and this is by far the best one yet.”I smiled at David Chen, Rhodes CFO and head of partnerships, and raised my glass. “Three months of planning. Every detail matters.”“Three months.” He shook his head, laughing. “Killian is the luckiest man in this industry and he doesn’t even know it.”I laughed with him because it was easy and because I believed it. Killian knew. He always knew. He had told me once, very quietly, that the company would have been dead in the water without me. That I was the reason any of it worked. I had held that sentence close for three years like something precious.David moved on to greet someone else and I stood at the edge of the ballroom and looked at everything I had built.The white dahlias on every table. I had spent eleven days sourcing them from a farm in California because Killian had mentioned once, years ago, that his mother grew t