Crown of Ashes

The first thing Isabella Moreau noticed was the taste of champagne on her tongue—expensive, French, the kind Marcus always insisted on for appearances. The second thing she noticed was that she was dying. No. Had died. The memories slammed into her like a physical blow, stealing the air from her lungs. Cold concrete beneath her cheek. The smell of industrial disinfectant and human despair. The fluorescent lights that never turned off, burning into her retinas even when she closed her eyes. Four years of appeals that went nowhere. Four years of Marcus's lawyers painting her as the architect of fraud she'd never committed, embezzlement she'd never touched, crimes that had his fingerprints all over them but her name on the documents. Four years of dying slowly in a cell while he celebrated with her. Sienna. Blonde, beautiful, predatory Sienna, who'd smiled at Isabella over charity luncheons while f*****g her husband in hotel rooms that cost more than most people's monthly rent. Isabella's hands gripped the edge of the vanity—white marble, imported Italian, obscenely expensive—and she forced herself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way the prison therapist had taught her before she'd stopped attending sessions because what was the point of managing anxiety when you were rotting from the inside out? But she wasn't in prison. She was in the bridal suite of the Crawford Estate, wearing a dress that cost forty thousand dollars, and according to the ornate clock on the wall—Louis XVI, because Marcus's mother had taste—she had exactly forty-seven minutes before she was supposed to walk down the aisle and marry the man who would destroy her life. Would have destroyed her life. Past tense. Future tense. The grammar of it made her head spin. Isabella lifted her gaze to the mirror and met her own eyes. Twenty-eight years old. Smooth skin, no prison pallor. Dark eyes that hadn't yet learned to go flat and dead when the guards walked by. Hair styled in an elaborate updo that had taken two hours and three people to achieve. The dress—God, the dress—was a masterpiece of silk and lace, fitted perfectly to her body, a monument to virginal elegance that would photograph beautifully for the society pages. She looked like a bride. She felt like a ghost. "Well," she said aloud, her voice cutting through the silence like a blade. "This is either a psychotic break or the universe's most f****d-up apology." Her reflection didn't answer, which was probably for the best. Talking to yourself was fine. Expecting responses was when they sent you back to the therapist. The memories kept coming, relentless and visceral. The trial. Marcus on the witness stand, his face arranged in perfect devastation as he testified that he'd trusted her, that he'd had no idea she was embezzling from their joint accounts, from his family's charitable foundation, from the investors who'd believed in their partnership. His voice had cracked at exactly the right moments. The jury had eaten it up. She remembered her lawyer—the public defender who'd been assigned after Marcus's family froze her assets—telling her to take the plea deal. Seven years instead of twenty. She'd refused. She'd been innocent. Surely that mattered. It hadn't. Twenty years. She'd served four before the pneumonia took her. Prison healthcare being what it was—which was to say, barely functional—she'd died in the infirmary on a Tuesday morning while Marcus was probably having brunch with Sienna at whatever trendy restaurant had caught his attention that week. She'd died alone. She'd died knowing he'd won. And now she was here, in a wedding dress, with a second chance she absolutely did not deserve but was sure as hell going to take. Isabella's hands moved to the buttons at her back—tiny pearl things that had required assistance to fasten. Her fingers found them easily, muscle memory from a life she hadn't lived yet guiding her movements. The dress loosened. She shrugged it off her shoulders and let it pool at her feet, forty thousand dollars of silk and lies crumpled on imported tile. She stood in her undergarments—white lace, also expensive, also chosen by Marcus's mother—and felt the weight lift from her chest. Not all of it. The rage was still there, burning cold and bright beneath her sternum. But the suffocating pressure of inevitability was gone. She wasn't going to marry him. She wasn't going to smile for the cameras and cut the cake and dance the first dance while his hand rested possessively on her waist. She wasn't going to sign the papers that would tangle their finances together, giving him access to everything she had, every account, every asset, every piece of leverage he'd need to frame her when the time came. She wasn't going to be the woman who died in prison. The question was: what woman was she going to be instead? Isabella moved to the closet—walk-in, naturally, because the Crawford Estate didn't do anything by halves—and found her clothes from yesterday. A simple black dress, designer but understated. Heels that could double as weapons if necessary. She dressed quickly, efficiently, her mind already three steps ahead. Marcus would be downstairs, greeting guests, playing the role of devoted groom. His parents would be holding court in the garden. Sienna—because of course Sienna would be here, probably as someone's plus-one, positioned perfectly to watch Isabella walk down the aisle toward the man Sienna was already f*****g—would be somewhere in the crowd, her smile sharp as knives. The wedding had two hundred guests. The Crawford Estate had four exits she knew about and probably two more she didn't. Her car was in the main lot, but the keys were in her purse, which was—she scanned the suite—there, on the settee by the window. She could leave. Just walk out. Disappear into the city and let Marcus deal with the fallout of a runaway bride. But that was running. And Isabella Moreau didn't run. She walked to the window and looked out over the estate grounds. Manicured gardens. White chairs arranged in perfect rows. An arch covered in roses that probably cost more than most people's cars. Everything beautiful. Everything controlled. Everything exactly as Marcus wanted it. Her reflection in the window glass was sharp-edged, dark-eyed, dangerous. "You want to destroy me?" she murmured to the ghost of Marcus somewhere below. "Too late. I'm already dead. Which means I have nothing left to lose." The thought crystallized into something cold and bright and absolutely certain. She wasn't going to run from Marcus. She was going to ruin him. But she couldn't do it alone. She needed leverage. She needed power. She needed someone who hated Marcus as much as she did, someone with resources and ruthlessness and absolutely no moral qualms about burning the world down if it meant winning. She needed Ezra Kane. Marcus's biggest rival. The self-made tech mogul who'd built an empire out of spite and brilliance. The man Marcus had screwed over in a business deal three years ago—or would screw over, timeline depending—and who'd been waiting for an opportunity to return the favor ever since. The man whose office was twenty minutes from here if traffic was light. Isabella grabbed her purse, checked her reflection one last time—perfect, controlled, every hair in place despite the chaos in her head—and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a woman who'd died once and decided that the second time around, she was taking everyone down with her. "Let's see how you like it," she said to her reflection, to Marcus, to the universe that had given her this impossible gift, "when the bride strikes back." She walked out of the bridal suite, leaving the wedding dress crumpled on the floor like a shed skin, and didn't look back. Forty-three minutes until the ceremony. She had work to do.