HELENA
I stand across the street from Sterling Industries, hidden in shadows that bend around me like old friends. Sixty-two floors up, in the corner office, my son conducts business. Makes deals. Destroys people with contracts and cold calculation.
He has no idea I'm watching.
He never does.
The building is glass and steel, modern and soulless. Everything Dominic wanted. Everything I hated about that life.
But Chase is up there, and the curse I placed on his bloodline twenty-six years ago is finally bearing fruit.
My son. My beautiful, broken son.
I could have warned him. Could have told him what would happen when he inherited. Could have explained that every Sterling man is doomed to destroy the thing he loves most.
But I didn't.
Because some lessons can only be learned through pain.
The wind picks up, cold even for January. People on the street pull their coats tighter. They feel it. The supernatural chill that follows me everywhere now.
