Chapter 1: Waking Up Sold

Sunny

Cold air tore into my lungs just as my eyes snapped open.

I sat up too fast making my heart slammed against my ribs. The room swam: polished marble, dark wood, a wall of glass. Beyond it there was no skyline, no familiar brick. Only black-blue ocean, hurling itself against the rocks far below.

What the hell.

This wasn’t my apartment. My bedroom had squeaky floorboards and a window that never quite closed.

I shoved off the silk duvet and swung my feet to the floor. My head throbbed. I pressed my fingers to my temples and dragged the last thing I remembered into the light.

Tuesday night. My kitchen table. Lena had come over with a bottle of sweet white wine to celebrate her raise, chattering about her mean boss, pouring my glass first, I took two sips of wine, it had tasted faintly metallic, bitter at the back of my tongue. Then my arms went heavy, the edges of the room went gray, and everything went dark.

Tuesday. The light outside was the thin white of morning. Wait… how many mornings had I missed?

The door opened.

I snatched the sheet to my chest. A woman in a crisp black-and-white uniform came in carrying a silver tray: a porcelain cup, a small jug of water. She set it down and bowed her head to show respect.

“Good morning, Miss Jane. Congratulations on passing your interview. Welcome to the island estate.”

“My interview?” My voice cracked. “I never applied for anything. I’m an administrative assistant. There’s been a mistake—”

“Everything has been reviewed and finalized, Miss Jane.” Her smile stopped well short of her eyes. “Mr. Sterling will see you shortly.”

“Wait!” I lunged for the door. “My sister and my boyfriend must be looking for me right now. Let me call them!”

She was already backing out. Two men in dark suits stepped into the gap, faces strong as stone. One drew the door shut. An electronic lock engaged with a flat, final click.

I pounded on the wood until my palms burned. “Open the door! Somebody help me!”

Nothing. Only my own voice, coming back hollow.

I ran to the windows. Sealed. Four stories down, a sheer cliff and a roaring sea. Beyond the glass, high stone walls, and guards walking the length of them.

An island. I was on an island.

I leaned my forehead against the cold pane and let the tears come.

Aiden. Lena. Please find me.

Hundreds of miles away, cameras swarmed the steps of the city police precinct.

Lena Jane stood at the center of the flashbulbs in a muted gray sweater, eyes swollen, a tissue crushed in her fist. She looked small and breakable.

“Please,” she sobbed into the microphones. “My sister, Sunny Jane, has been missing for over forty-eight hours. She missed work. Her phone goes straight to voicemail. Her apartment was left unlocked.”

“Miss Jane, do you suspect foul play?” a reporter called.

“No! Sunny is the most responsible person I know. She would never just run away…she’s not someone to make enemies.” Lena’s voice broke on cue. “If anyone has seen her, please, call the police. Bring my sister home.”

A few feet away, Aiden Hope stared at the pavement. His hair was a mess, his eyes bloodshot from two sleepless days. He had his fists jammed in his pockets as if he could hold himself together by force.

Where are you, Sunny?

Lena turned from the cameras and walked to the side of the building, face buried in her hands.

Behind them, the trembling stopped.

A slow, cool smile curved her mouth. She reached into her designer bag, past her phone, and touched the stiff edge of a folded document: a signed transfer agreement for a private surrogacy program, complete with Sunny’s signature and falsified medical records. Beside it was the bank confirmation of a multimillion-dollar wire that had hit her account at midnight.

For twenty-four years Lena had lived in her sister’s shadow. Sunny was the smart one, the dependable one, the daughter everyone praised, the woman who had won a man like Aiden while Lena was just the afterthought.

Not anymore.

She smoothed her sweater, rearranged her face into grief, and stepped back into the light.

I’d been pacing the room for hours when the sun began to fade, bleeding crimson and violet across the water. I had searched every drawer and shelf for a phone, a tool, anything useful but the room had been stripped of anything useful. It was a very beautiful cell.

Just then the lock disengaged.

I backed up until the glass pressed against my spine and curled my hands into fists.

The man who walked in made the air in the room drop ten degrees. Tall, broad through the shoulders, in a black suit that fit like a second skin. Hard jaw, dark hair swept back. But it was his eyes I couldn’t look away from: storm-gray, level, utterly without warmth. He crossed the marble like a man who had never once been told no.

He didn’t look like a kidnapper. He looked like the owner of the building.

“You’re awake,” he said.

My knees were shaking. I locked them. “Who… who are you? Why am I here?”

He took a leather folder from inside his jacket and held it loosely at his side. “Roman Sterling. And this is your new home.”

“No. You don’t understand. I was drugged. I was kidnapped…yes someone kidnapped me, and I woke up here. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m a victim of a crime—”

He didn’t blink. He opened the folder and skimmed it like a quarterly report.

“There is no mistake, Sunny. Your background check is complete. Your medical records are verified. Your consent forms and confidentiality agreements are signed. You were selected from three hundred candidates.”

“I didn’t sign anything!” It tore out of me. “I have a sister. I have a boyfriend. They must be looking for me!”

Snap. He closed the folder.

Two unhurried steps, and the window had nowhere left to give me. He lifted his hand and took my chin between his fingers. Not hard. He didn’t have to be but I couldn’t turn my face away.

“Listen carefully.” His voice was low and even. Cedar and rain, and under it, nothing at all I could read. “How you arrived doesn’t matter. What you remember doesn’t matter. The contract is signed and the money has been paid.”

“This is illegal,” I whispered. The tears ran over his thumb. “You’re a criminal.”

“I’m the man who decides what happens to you now.” No heat. No pity. “You were brought here to carry the Sterling heir. You belong to the surrogacy program. And Sunny—” His grip tightened for one second, just long enough. “You belong to me.”

He let go.

“No one leaves this island.” He turned for the door. “Get used to it.”

“Roman! Wait!”

But he was already through it. He paused only to set the folder on the console table beside the door, as casually as a man leaving his keys.

“Read it,” he said, without looking back. “Then stop telling me you didn’t sign.”

The door shut. The lock engaged.

I stood there until my legs wouldn’t hold me, and then I crossed the room on shaking feet and opened the folder.

The contract was eleven pages. I didn’t need to read the terms. I read the last page.

My signature was at the bottom. Not near-perfect. Perfect. The same slanted S I’d been making since the sixth grade, the same swoop under the J.

Beside it was a date.

Nineteen days ago.

Nineteen days ago I had been at my desk, eating a sandwich, worrying about the task I had been too lazy to complete and also been planning a surprise birthday dinner for Aiden.

Someone had forged my signature

And whoever it was had known my handwriting well enough to sign my life away.