Chapter 1

When the wildfire reached the treatment center, the door to my room was still locked.

The sky outside had turned dark red. Ash swirled against the glass. The fire alarm had been blaring for more than ten minutes, but no one came down the hall to open my door.

I was seven months pregnant, and there was still a needle mark on my wrist from the sedative. My stomach kept tightening. The baby was still so small. It couldn't come now, not like this.

"Is anyone there?"

I pounded on the door. My voice was already hoarse.

My call to the nurses' station finally went through, and I heard the doctors on duty arguing at the other end.

"The helicopter can only take one more person."

"Mr. Vale just gave the order. Ms. Cole goes first."

"What about Ms. Reed?"

After a crackle of static, I heard Lucas.

"Keep her calm. She's emotionally unstable right now. She can't leave the ward without authorization."

Holding the phone, I forgot how to breathe.

Just two hours earlier, I'd begged him. I told him I wasn't crazy. Serena had misappropriated money from the foundation, and the records were right there in my email. If he'd just let me see a lawyer, I could prove everything.

Lucas wiped away my tears. He even sounded gentle.

"Evelyn, I'm only trying to protect you," he'd said.

Then he had them take my phone and lock me in here.

Smoke was seeping in through the vent. I ripped the sheet off the bed and stuffed it into the gap under the door. Then a sharp pain tore through my abdomen, and warm fluid ran down my legs and into my slippers.

I slid slowly down the door and pressed my hand to my stomach.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "Mommy trusted the wrong person again."

Suddenly there was a crash from the end of the hallway.

Then another. And another.

Someone in the smoke was shouting my name.

"Evelyn!"

I knew that voice. It was Adrian Vale, Lucas's older brother, who hadn't been home in years.

The lock was bending under the blows. I tried to answer, but all that came out of my throat was a burning rasp. When the last blow landed, my hand slid off my stomach.

Darkness swallowed everything.

"Evelyn?"

Someone was saying my name from across the table.

My eyes flew open. I drew a breath. No smoke. I was clutching a silver pen, its metal hot from my grip.

Cold air blew down from the vents in the office ceiling. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the San Francisco sky was so clear it almost hurt to look at.

Lucas sat beside me, the cuff of his suit resting on a stack of papers. He wasn't my husband yet. He didn't have the tired, impatient look he would wear later.

"Sign here." He tapped the last page. "Once you do, the legal team can register the Reed Trust's voting proxy before the wedding."

I looked down at the date. October third. Six weeks before our wedding.

I'd come back to the day I signed.

In my last life, it was in this very office that I gave Lucas proxy authority over the 28 percent voting stake my father had left me. After that, he became CEO of the Vale Hotel Group without a hitch. Before every board meeting, I had to ask my own husband how he planned to use my votes.

"Evie?"

Lucas leaned closer and covered my hand with his, the way he had countless times before.

I jerked my hand away. His hand stopped in midair.

"What's wrong?"

Right then, the door swung open. Serena walked in with an armful of wedding catalogs. Her pale blond hair was twisted into a loose knot, and she smiled at us.

"Am I interrupting?" She saw the papers on the desk and flashed an apologetic smile. "Evelyn, you haven't signed yet? Lucas was up half the night working on this. He's just trying to take some weight off your shoulders."

In my last life, I signed as soon as I heard that. I'd thought of her as a sister since we were kids, and Lucas always said people who truly loved each other shouldn't keep their guard up.

I slowly closed the folder.

"I'm taking this home to have an independent lawyer review it."

Serena's smile froze for a second.

Lucas frowned. "The company's lawyers have already reviewed it three times."

"They represent the company. Not me."

"We're getting married in six weeks." His voice dropped. "You really want to treat me like an outsider now?"

I looked at him.

This was the same man who had told me, when he sent me to the treatment center, that it was all for my own good.

"My votes aren't a wedding present," I said. "Not after the wedding, either."

The office went quiet.

Serena set the catalogs on the corner of the desk and tried to smooth things over. "Evelyn probably just has pre-wedding jitters. Why don't you have some water first? The papers can wait until another—"

"There's no need to wait." I took my phone out of my bag and called the trust bank. "This is Evelyn Reed. Please revoke every temporary proxy authorization currently on file, effective immediately. From now on, anyone exercising the Reed Trust's voting rights must have written instructions signed by me personally each time."

Lucas stood up.

"Do you know what you're doing?"

"Yes."

He was still waiting for me to take it back. Every time we'd argued before, all he had to do was ask me that, and I'd start wondering if I was being unreasonable.

The bank confirmed the revocation. I gathered up the papers, stood, and headed for the door.

Behind me, Lucas scoffed.

"Without the Vale name, you think you can hold on to those shares?"

I didn't look back.

The TV in the company lobby was tuned to financial news. On the screen, a man in a charcoal coat walked out of the airport as reporters crowded around him, thrusting microphones toward his face.

The caption read: Adrian Vale, former head of operations at the Vale Hotel Group, returns to Northern California to join the company's wildfire safety review.

He stopped and said just one thing to the camera.

"If people can't get out of a building safely, it has no business welcoming guests."

That voice cut through the smoke in my memory. He was the man who had been pounding on my door at the very end.

Standing in front of the screen, I sent a text to a number I hadn't used in years.

Adrian, I want to see you.

That door never opened. But now Adrian was here in San Francisco, and I still had a chance to speak to him face-to-face.