"I would carry a thousand sins for you," Kai Rivers used to whisper, holding Clara Mercer’s cold hands in his. As the brilliant CEO of Rivers Corporation, Kai was Clara’s shield, her employer, and the man who loved her beyond reason. But that devotion shattered on a rainy night when Clara’s reckless brother committed the unforgivable—causing the fatal crash that took Kai’s mother. Overnight, the warmth in Kai’s dark eyes turned to absolute ice. Convinced Clara was complicit in the tragedy, he stripped away her position, demoting her to a nobody in his empire while office rumors tore her apart. Kai wants her to suffer. He wants her to pay. What he doesn't know is that Clara’s body is already executing his sentence. Deep inside her bones, her blood is failing from a terminal disease. And by the time Kai finally turns back to look at her, she won't just be gone from his life—she will be gone forever.

Adrian Blake looked expensive. That was the first thing Sam Gonzales noticed before she tried to steal from him. Twenty-one-year-old Sam knows how to survive Manila's streets. By day, she steals from careless tourists and wealthy strangers. By night, she hides behind a mask at a shady club, dancing for men she doesn't trust. Every peso she earns goes toward one thing—keeping her sick grandmother alive. She has no family to save her. No future to escape to. Only an old diamond-encrusted platinum necklace her late mother left behind with one warning: Never sell it. Then Sam makes the mistake of targeting Adrian Blake. A wealthy private investigator from Manhattan, Adrian has come to Manila searching for a missing heiress who disappeared twenty years ago. He isn't like the men Sam usually steals from. He's observant, dangerous, and impossible to fool. And when he catches Sam with his stolen watch, he notices the necklace around her neck. A rare Crimson Crest. A piece of jewelry connected to the billionaire family he was hired to find. Suddenly, the street thief Adrian thought he had caught may be the woman everyone has been searching for. But proving Sam's identity won't be easy. Someone has spent twenty years making sure the missing heiress stays missing. And the person standing closest to Sam may know exactly why. As Adrian begins protecting Sam from the people hunting her, she struggles to understand why a man from a world she could never belong to would risk everything for her. But the closer Adrian gets to the truth, the more dangerous Sam's past becomes. Her brother is hiding something. Her necklace holds a secret. And someone powerful is willing to kill to make sure Sam never discovers who she really is. Sam thought she was stealing from Adrian Blake. She never imagined he would be the man who uncovered the identity someone had stolen from her.