Chase Sterling always felt like furniture. The kind you don't notice, the kind that's easy to shove in a corner and forget. He was used to it: people looked right through him, brushed him off like lint. But it only takes one phone call to erase a lifetime of being overlooked. When his estranged family meets a tragic end, Chase suddenly finds himself in charge of the sprawling Sterling fortune. Turns out, riches aren't the only thing the family left him. There's a curse running through his blood, warping love into something hungry and dangerous, impossible to escape.

Vivian Ashford never set out to blow Chase's life to smithereens. Just one decision (a sharp, ruthless move at graduation) was all it took to set their worlds spinning out of control. While Vivian soaks up the Hollywood limelight and collects red-carpet headlines, Chase slips into his new role as Manhattan's most intimidating heir. But no matter how far they run, something keeps yanking them back together, like a stitch in an old wound that refuses to heal.

The wine bottle is empty before I realize I've been drinking. Red staining my lips, my hands, my white couch where I've been sitting for hours watching the news replay Chase's proposal over and over and over until the words stop meaning anything and just become sounds. Just noise. Just the soundtrack to my destruction.


"Chase Sterling proposes to Elise Vanderwood hours after kissing ex-girlfriend Vivian Ashford at her ruined wedding to his half-brother Ethan Beckett."


The sentence is so absurd it should be fiction, should be something I wrote for a role, should be anything except my actual life documented across every news outlet and gossip site and social media platform in existence. Three hundred million people have watched the proposal by now, have seen Chase kiss Elise, have witnessed what the world thinks is romantic gesture but what I know is curse cruelty manifesting through public betrayal designed to feed on my pain.


Chapter 67 - Vivian's Breakdown