Chapter 1

"Sign it, Selene."

Tristan's voice cut through the ballroom's hum like glass. Crystal chandeliers threw gold light across three hundred faces — shareholders, reporters, the entire elite of Wolfe Corporation's tenth anniversary — all frozen mid-sip, mid-sentence, mid-breath.

Selene's fingers curled around the stem of her champagne flute. She set it down without a sound.

"Here?" She asked pointing where to sign. Her voice came out steady, almost pleasant, like she was asking about the weather.

"Here." Tristan didn't blink. Beside him, Bianca Quinn stood in crimson silk, her hand resting lightly on his forearm like she'd always belonged there.

A hush spreads through the room the way spilled wine spreads across a white tablecloth — slow, then all at once.

"Bianca has always understood me," Tristan announced, loud enough for the microphone clipped to his lapel to catch every word and throw it to the corners of the ballroom. "In ways my marriage never allowed,” he continued.

Bianca lowered her eyes. A tremor moved through her shoulders — practiced, timed, and perfect. Anyone watching would've called it shame.

Selene watched her smile with her teeth.

Somewhere behind Selene, a woman gasped. A camera shutter clicked twice, three times, a small mechanical heartbeat. Selene felt the weight of every stare pressing against her spine, waiting. Waiting for her knees to buckle. Waiting for the tears, the scene, the pleading.

She reached for the folder Tristan's assistant held out to her instead.

The papers were cold and crisp under her fingers, the kind of paper that costs more per sheet than most people's dinner. She flipped to the signature line. Read it. Read it again, though she'd already memorized every clause in the lawyer's office three days ago.

Tristan's jaw tightened when she didn't cry or beg. She could see it — the small flex of muscle, a man expecting a performance and receiving silence instead.

The pen was heavier than she remembered.

She signed her name in one clean stroke, the same signature she'd practiced as a girl in an orphanage dormitory, dreaming it would one day belong to someone who mattered.

It did, once. Not anymore.

She closed the folder and held it out to him. Tristan didn't move to take it right away — his hand hovered, fingers twitching, like he'd expected resistance and hadn't planned for what came after it.

"That's it?" The words slipped out of him before he could stop them.

Selene tilted her head. "What were you hoping for, Tristan? A scene?"

Somewhere in the crowd, a reporter's pen scratched fast across a notepad.

She smoothed the front of her dress — a small, deliberate motion, buying herself one more second in front of all these people who wanted to watch her break. Then she looked at Bianca, whose triumphant expression had gone very still, like she hadn't accounted for this either.

"I hope," Selene said, quiet enough that the room leaned in to hear it, "that one day, you never regret choosing the wrong woman."

She didn't wait for a response. She turned, and three hundred people parted for her without needing to be asked, the way people always make room for something they don't understand.

Her heels struck the marble floor in a rhythm that gave away nothing. Behind her, she heard Tristan say her name once — just once — and something in the sound of it wasn't triumphant at all.

It sounded like a man who'd just realized he was standing in a room full of people, and none of them were the one he actually wanted watching.

She didn't turn around to check.

The cold hit her the moment the revolving door spat her out onto the street. The busy streets at night smelled like rain that hadn't quite decided to fall yet, exhaust fumes and roasted chestnuts from a cart two blocks down. She stood on the curb, folder still tucked under her arm, and let herself breathe for the first time in an hour.

Her hands weren't even shaking. That surprised her more than anything that had happened inside.

A car horn blared somewhere. Doormen in red coats waved down cabs for departing guests. Selene took one step toward the curb —

— and something small and fast slammed into her legs.

She staggered, catching herself against a lamppost, and looked down to find a little girl in a lavender coat plastered against her shins like she meant to disappear into the fabric of Selene's dress.

Wide brown eyes stared up at her. A thumb hovered near trembling lips.

"Pretty miss," the girl whispered, breathless, glancing back over her shoulder toward the hotel entrance. "Please hide me."

Selene blinked. Whatever composure she'd built in that ballroom cracked wide open at the sight of this child's fingers gripping fistfuls of her skirt like a lifeline.

"Hide you from who?" she asked, crouching slightly, instinct taking over before thought could catch up.

The girl didn't answer. She just pressed closer, small and warm against the cold night, hiccupping in a way that wasn't quite crying but wasn't far from it either.

Selene's arms moved before her mind caught up, curving around the child's shoulders, shielding her from whatever, and whoever was coming.

Footsteps approached from the direction of the hotel, unhurried but purposeful, the kind of walk that belonged to a man used to people stepping out of his way.

Selene lifted her chin and found herself looking directly into the calm, assessing eyes of a stranger she'd never met — and somehow already knew mattered.