Chapter 2

After I hung up I walked out of the building in a daze and went to file the paperwork to erase my identity.

They told me it would take three days.

So I tried to book a flight for three days out.

Every card in my name had been frozen.

I went through a dozen of them. Not one worked.

I took a slow breath, swallowed the pressure sitting in my chest, and called Lucas to book the ticket for me.

Then I drove to Shaw Group and pushed open the door to Stella's office.

Before I could get a word out, she threw the breach agreement at me.

"Three months to pay it off. Otherwise Starline files a lawsuit."

The papers caught me across the face. Something in my chest went cold and stayed cold. I made myself speak anyway.

"What gives you the right to freeze my accounts? Every dollar in them is money I earned. You don't get to touch it."

Stella looked up. Her eyes were ice.

"Without the agency I built for you, would you be standing where you are?

"Don't forget it, Noah. Everything you have, I gave you."

I stared at her.

When she walked away from the criminal world to start something clean, she didn't have a dollar to her name.

I'm the one who earned it. Background parts. Playing corpses. Smiling at people who didn't deserve it for a two-hundred-dollar day rate, when I'd never flattered anyone in my life. Letting directors and producers pour drinks down me because we needed the money.

Later Shaw Group went public, and she founded Starline for me. One agency, one artist.

I was the face of every Shaw product. They financed nothing I wasn't in.

Everyone in Harbor City knew it. Noah Lane had all of Shaw behind him.

Now she'd pulled every bit of it back and handed it to someone else.

And she still wanted to strip me to the bone and burn down everything I'd built.

I tore the agreement in half, then in half again, and threw the pieces in her face.

"Stella. That drink I had that night. You put something in it yourself, didn't you?

"You were willing to destroy me just to clear a path for Leo. That's it, isn't it?"

She paused. Then her lips parted, and what came out of them was pure poison.

"You already know. Why ask?"

I'd known the answer going in. Hearing her say it still broke something.

"For one trophy you stood there and let the whole city tear me apart? Let them call me filth?"

She was quiet for a moment.

"Once the ceremony's over, I'll clear your name.

"Leo only wants his dream. Pity him. Step aside, just this once."

I looked at how easily she said it, and I laughed.

I'd heard that line enough times.

From the day she brought him home I'd been stepping aside. My room became his. My roles became his. Now my whole life was supposed to move out of his way.

I pulled the watch off my wrist and threw it in her face.

"Take it back.

"I'm giving you to him too."

Stella saw what it was, and her fingers tightened on the folder.

That watch was worth nothing. She'd washed dishes at a diner for three months to buy it, back when we had nothing at all.

She swore to me then that she'd give me the best life in the world.

These days a watch I throw on for an event runs eight figures. That one cost less than a thousand dollars, and it was the most valuable thing I owned.

Not anymore.