Chapter 1
I turned to leave, but security blocked my path.
They had mistaken me for someone who'd slipped in without an invitation, just another uninvited nobody trying her luck.
My clumsy Italian only made their expressions grow colder and more severe.
Rough hands forced me to my knees against the ground, the coarse stone bricks biting painfully into my kneecaps.
In my panic, I instinctively looked toward Caspian Sterling, who stood not far away.
"Caspian! Help me! They've got the wrong person!"
I screamed with every ounce of strength I had.
He turned his head at the sound, his gaze drifting over my face with detached indifference.
Then, as though he were looking at a stranger of no consequence whatsoever, he calmly shifted his eyes away.
"I don't know her."
Those few words made me understand, with absolute and devastating clarity, that I was utterly alone in Italy.
Security handed me over to the police on suspicion of theft. Before questioning me, an officer recited the standard warning: I had the right to remain silent, anything I said could be used against me, and I had the right to an attorney.
For 3 days, I was questioned in custody and kept in a windowless holding room, cold, airless, and suffocating. I endured every single second of those 72 hours.
Cross-border identity verification and fingerprint matching took time. It wasn't until the clearance report finally arrived at the station that every last misunderstanding was resolved.
I dragged my exhausted body out of the hillside police station, and the person waiting for me wasn't Caspian. It was only his secretary.
The secretary pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his tone laced with reproach. "Evelyn Vance, what exactly have you been doing? Mr. Sterling has an appearance at the International Antiquities Summit tonight, yet he waited for you at the airport for a full 2 hours."
The last fragile ember of hope still flickering inside me was extinguished completely in the cold foreign wind of Italy.
The day I returned home, the moment I stepped through the airport gates, countless camera flashes and microphones swarmed around me.
News of my overseas detention had already spread through every corner of the domestic art world, reduced to a scandal for everyone to gossip about over dinner.
I fought my way through the crowd and made it back to the residence. The first words out of Caspian's mouth were steeped in condescending reproach.
"How many times have I told you to wear simple pale dresses when you go out? Why do you never listen?"
His brow furrowed tightly. "You know perfectly well that I have face blindness and can't distinguish women's faces."
I quietly clenched my fists, saying nothing.
It wasn't that he couldn't tell faces apart.
It was simply that his flawless memory had never belonged to me.
The secretly taken photos from my overseas detention spread across the internet, and the tsunami of scandal crashed down on me. Everyone said I was a social climber, a woman who couldn't take a hint and refused to let go.
He flipped to another page of his business documents without so much as lifting his eyes, his voice so flat it bordered on heartless. "PR has already drafted a statement. There's a press conference arranged for tomorrow. You'll go out there, clarify the whole thing, and apologize to the media."
Apologize?
I laughed bitterly to myself.
He wanted me to apologize? For what? For his cruelty in pretending not to know me in front of everyone? Or was I supposed to pay the price for that convenient excuse of face blindness he trotted out whenever it suited him?
I gazed quietly at his perfectly composed profile, swallowing the acid burning in my chest, and spoke softly. "At the birthday banquet that night, the person you walked up to and embraced... that was Serena Sterling?"
The hand turning pages went still. A rare flicker of stiffness, something almost like discomfort, surfaced on his face.
After several seconds of silence, he produced a careless, half-hearted excuse. "It was too crowded. I mistook her for you."
I nearly laughed out loud at how absurd that sounded. That night, Serena had been wearing a striking scarlet gown impossible to miss, her hair styled in voluminous, dramatic curls. From head to toe, she looked nothing like me, a woman who always wore plain clothes and kept her hair straight and dark.
