Chapter 1

By the time we found Julie Smith, she was in bed with William.

When the door burst open, Julie screamed and threw herself into William's arms.

Then she saw the people who had walked in behind me. Terror and disbelief flooded her eyes. She couldn't understand why the Voss family council had taken my side.

My family had raised me in a secluded convent to shield me from the feuds between families. They had brought me home only six months ago to prepare for the wedding.

Apart from William, to whom I had been promised since childhood, almost no one knew what I looked like.

Julie had counted on that when she arranged my kidnapping on the road to the wedding. She planned to marry into the Voss family in my place and become its matriarch.

What she didn't know was that the Voss family recognized the crest in my hand, not my face.

As long as I held my family's crest, Julie could argue until she lost her voice and the Voss family would never recognize her.

"Julie, you looked after me for more than ten years. I treated you like my own sister. When we were children, my father paid the traffickers to get you out of their hands. When you were burning with fever, I stayed at your bedside for three days and nights.

"If you loved William, you could have told me. I would have ended the engagement and stepped aside.

"So why did you plot with him to have me kidnapped? I was almost shot to death."

Before I finished, the council members behind me began to murmur.

"William met the Hathaway heiress himself, didn't he? And now she shows up with a different face, and he noticed nothing?"

"Do you have to ask? He went along with it. He was probably sleeping with that maid long before this."

"The Hathaway family is one of our closest allies. We share several shipping routes. Now William sets up their daughter over a maid? And we're supposed to trust a man with judgment like that to lead this family?"

"Conrad, if your nephew doesn't give us an explanation, my men won't put a cent toward next quarter's gun-running operation."

William went ashen, but he didn't dare answer.

Of course he did not dare.

The room held men from the north docks, men from the south docks, and council members who had built the empire alongside his grandfather.

He hadn't formally taken over yet. One wrong word today, and tomorrow someone would press a gun to the back of his head.

Marcus Voss, the head of the family council, sat at the head of the table gripping his cane, murder in his eyes.

Julie suddenly sighed and wrapped her arms around me.

"Did you skip your medication again? Have you forgotten that you're only my maid?

"I know you get confused. But this is the Voss estate. How could you—"