Chapter 1: Thief

Juno's POV

Someone was sitting in my chair.

It was seven on Friday, the family dinner at Grant's townhouse. Margaret's rule. In five years of marriage, I had never missed one.

I stopped in the dining room doorway with my coat still on. Rain ran off my sleeve and dripped onto the marble.

Tatum Rhodes sat at my husband's right hand, in the seat that had been mine since my wedding day. She worked for Margaret's charity. She was twenty-six to my twenty-eight, and she laughed at everything Grant said.

"You're late," Margaret said from the head of the table.

I looked at the gold clock on the sideboard. "It's one minute past seven."

"Then you are one minute late." She didn't look up from her wine. "Agnes. Set a place for Juno at the end, by the kitchen door. Where the help can reach her."

Sloane smiled over her glass, red lipstick, sharp black bob. Grant studied his plate.

Agnes Moran laid a plate and a fork at the far end of the table, beside the swinging door. She did not meet my eyes. In twenty years of working for this family, she was the only person who had ever asked me how my day went.

I walked the length of the table and sat. "Grant. Why is Tatum in my seat?"

"Sit down, Juno."

"I am sitting. That's not an answer."

Margaret tapped her glass with a silver spoon. "Now that everyone is here, I have news. Tatum is carrying my grandchild."

Nobody moved.

Tatum laid a hand on her flat stomach. "Juno, I'm so sorry. We never wanted you to find out like this."

"To the heir!" Sloane said, and lifted her glass.

"Tatum moves in tomorrow," Margaret went on. "She will take the main bedroom. It gets the morning sun, and a pregnant woman needs light. You may use the guest room until you've packed."

"That's my bedroom."

"It was your bedroom. It was never your house."

I turned to my husband. "Grant. Is this true?"

He cut into his steak. "Yes."

One word. He didn't even put the knife down.

The kitchen door swung open and Agnes came through with the small blue teapot. She set it by my plate and filled my cup. Dark, bitter, smelling of dried leaves. The same tea she had poured every Friday since the month I married. Margaret had ordered it for me herself.

"Drink it," Margaret said. "It's for your womb." She smiled at Tatum. "Not that it ever did her any good."

Sloane laughed into her napkin. "Five years, Juno. Not so much as a late period. I'd have asked for a refund."

"A wife who can't give her husband a son," Margaret said, "is a houseguest with a ring."

Two young maids had crept to the kitchen doorway to watch. One whispered. The other covered her mouth.

I drank the tea. I always drank the tea. It was easier than a fight. Agnes refilled my cup without a word.

Margaret reached up and unclasped the diamonds from her throat. "These belonged to my husband's mother. They go to the woman who gives this family its next son." She turned to Tatum. "After dinner, they're yours."

She laid the necklace in a velvet box and held it out. "Agnes. The sideboard."

Agnes set the open box on the sideboard, two feet behind my chair.

The week I married Grant, Margaret had told me those diamonds would be mine one day. She had never mentioned them again.

I couldn't sit there another second. I pushed back my chair and stood, with my back to the sideboard and the open velvet box, and gripped the chair rail until my hands stopped shaking.

"Sit," Margaret said.

"I'd like a minute."

"You will take this news sitting down."

I stood there for the length of one long breath, an arm's reach from the diamonds, with every eye in the room on my back. Then I sat.

Halfway through the main course, Sloane stood. "This wine is warm. I'll tell the kitchen."

She walked down the table toward the kitchen door. She passed behind my chair, close enough that I smelled her perfume, and rested her hand on the chair back for a second. My bag shifted against my spine.

I thought nothing of it. Sloane had never touched anything of mine except to move it out of her way.

She came back with a cold bottle and sat down, still smiling.

When the plates were cleared, Margaret turned toward the sideboard. "Tatum, darling. Come and try them on."

She lifted the lid of the velvet box.

It was empty.

"My diamonds." Margaret's face went white. "Where are my diamonds?"

"Mother, don't panic," Sloane said softly. "Nobody has left the table except me, and I only went as far as the kitchen." She tilted her head and looked straight at me. "Juno stood at that sideboard with her back to all of us. For a full minute."

"I stood because I couldn't breathe. I haven't touched your diamonds."

"Then you won't mind." Margaret's voice went to ice. "Agnes. Empty her bag."

"No."

Grant finally looked at me. "Let her look, Juno. If you've done nothing, it costs you nothing."

Sloane came down the table with her wine glass in her hand, to watch.

Agnes lifted my bag off the chair with both hands. She held it against her chest for a moment. Then she turned it upside down over the white tablecloth.

My wallet fell out. My keys. A lipstick. Two pens. The old silver laptop slid across the cloth and stopped against my teacup.

My heart stopped with it.

Sloane picked up the laptop between two fingers, as if it were dirty. "Is this the same junk you had in law school? God, Juno." She lifted the lid before I could reach it.

Everything I had built was behind that screen. Every email. Every deal.

The screen lit up on an ordinary student desktop, full of first-year case notes. Without my passkey, that was all anyone would ever see.

"Case notes." Sloane scrolled, bored. "Still playing lawyer." She shut the lid and dropped it in front of me.

I breathed again.

Then Agnes shook the bag one last time. Something heavy slid out of the inside pocket and struck my dinner plate with a sharp clink.

The Ellison diamonds.

The maids gasped out loud. Tatum pressed a hand to her mouth. Agnes looked at Sloane. Then she looked at the floor and did not lift her eyes again.

"I didn't take them," I said. "Someone put them there."

"Thief." Margaret stood so fast her chair screamed across the marble. "Gutter-born, grasping little thief. I knew what you were the day he brought you into this house."

"Margaret, I have never stolen anything in my life."

"You sat at my table for five years and stole from me in front of my family!"

"Call the police," Sloane said sweetly, already holding up her phone. "Think of the headlines. Ellison wife in handcuffs."

"No police." Grant set down his napkin. "We do this quietly. A scandal helps nobody." He turned toward the hall. "Owen."

Across the hall, the study door squeaked open. Owen Park, Grant's thirty-year-old assistant, stepped into the room with a blue folder pressed against his ribs. He had been waiting in the study the whole time. He would not look at me.

That was how I knew Grant had planned this long before the diamonds went missing.

Owen laid the folder in front of Grant. Grant took out a stack of papers with yellow tabs and slid them down the table. They stopped against my plate, beside the necklace.

Divorce papers.

"You sign tonight," Grant said. "My lawyers file Monday morning."

"What are you giving me?"

"The apartment on Seventy-Ninth Street. It is more than you deserve."

"More than a thief deserves," Margaret said.

My mother gave up her career for my father. When he left her, she walked out with nothing. No money, no pride, not even an apology. I was fourteen, and I swore no man would ever do that to me.

At twenty-three, I quit law school to marry Grant Ellison.

I picked up the papers.

"You don't need to read it," Grant said, glancing at his gold watch. "It's standard."

"I read everything I sign."

"Standard" was Grant's word for anything he wanted signed fast. It meant skip the fine print.

He drummed his fingers on the table. Sloane sighed loudly. I turned the first page. Then the second.

On page three, I stopped breathing.

I knew this contract. I knew clause fourteen, which barred either side from claiming credit for the other's work. I knew the odd comma in clause nine. I knew the financial release, built to leave one person with nothing while making her feel lucky to get it.

I had written that release for a business buyout. I had written it for Grant's company, under a name he didn't know was mine.

Ledger.

For years, as Ledger, I had guided Grant through every crisis Ellison Group faced. I told him which buildings to buy, which banks to avoid, which partners were lying. Grant followed every word. A firm with two buildings had become a fifty-two-floor tower with his name on top.

He had never met Ledger. He had never once asked why his quiet wife sat at the kitchen island at three in the morning with an old silver laptop.

His lawyers had pulled my release off the company server, swapped the names, and handed it back to me. They thought they were brilliant.

"Juno." Grant tapped the table. "Sign."

I looked at him. Blond hair, perfect. Gray suit without one wrinkle. My work had paid for that suit and this house and the tower, and he had never once let me stand beside him in public.

"You took me to one dinner with your partners," I said. "One. Then nothing. No galas. No dinners."

"You weren't built for rooms like that." He said it calmly, with his eyes on his phone.

Something in me stopped arguing.

"Give me a pen."

Owen handed me a heavy black one. His hand shook. I signed every line marked with a yellow tab.

Juno Whitlock Ellison.

It was the last time I would write his name.

"One more thing." Grant held out his palm. "The ring. It was my grandmother's. Tatum should have it."

Tatum's eyes dropped to my left hand and stayed there.

The ring had never come off my finger. Grant had put it there in front of three hundred people and hadn't looked at it since.

I twisted it off. It left a pale band on my skin.

I dropped it into my teacup. It sank into the dark tea with a small splash.

I stood, carried the cup up the length of the table, and set it down in front of Tatum.

"Here. Drink it," I said. "It's for your womb."

One of the maids laughed out loud and slapped both hands over her mouth. Sloane's smile slipped. Margaret went from white to red.

"Get out of my son's house."

"Gladly."

"And take your rags with you!"

I went back to my chair and swept my things into my bag. The laptop went in last, at the bottom, where it belonged. I left the diamonds on my plate and didn't look back.

Owen followed me to the front door and opened it. Cold rain blew across the marble.

"For what it's worth, Mrs. Ellison," he said quietly, "I'm sorry."

It was the only apology anyone in that house ever gave me.

"Thank you, Owen."

He shut the door behind me.

I stood on the front steps under the stone arch. In my coat pocket, the burner phone buzzed.

That cheap phone had one job. It told me when Ledger had mail.

I balanced the laptop on my forearm, typed my passkey, and opened the hidden inbox. The newest message had arrived forty seconds ago.

From: Grant Ellison Subject: Urgent

Need you Monday. The Brooks deal is falling apart. Name your price.

He had sent it from the dinner table. He hadn't even waited for me to reach the street.

A laugh broke out of me, sharp and loud under the stone arch.

I typed five words.

Ledger is no longer available.

I hit send. For the first time ever, I sent a Ledger email without Read the fine print at the bottom.

Then I put the laptop away and walked down the steps into the rain.

The Marlowe Hotel was ten blocks south. I walked every one of them and didn't hurry.

The hotel bar was low and dim and smelled of wood and bourbon. Small green lamps glowed on the tables. In the corner stood a black piano nobody was playing. I took the last stool at the end of the bar, dripping on the floorboards, and ordered a whiskey, neat.

I had never ordered hard liquor in my life.

It burned. I drank it anyway. It washed away the taste of Margaret's tea.

I was halfway through my second when someone took the stool beside mine.

He was big. That was my first thought. Wide shoulders under a dark jacket, dark hair a little too long, and a thin white scar through his left eyebrow, as if someone had hit him there once and he'd never cared enough to hide it. He hung the jacket on the stool and rolled his white sleeves to the elbow. His forearms were corded and scarred, not the arms of a man who sat at a desk.

He ordered what I was having. Then he looked at me.

"You look like you just won something," he said. His voice was low and rough.

I turned my glass on the polished wood. "I just lost a husband."

He raised his whiskey toward mine.

"Then let me buy the winner a drink."