Chapter 1: The Sterling Goodbye
Cordelia Sterling loved to remind me that the chandelier in her foyer cost more than the house I grew up in. She told me that at least a dozen times during my three-year marriage to her son. It was her favorite, socially acceptable way of calling me trash.
Tonight, though, she didn't need to say a word.
Two private security guards dragged me out of the master bedroom. I was still wearing a thin silk nightgown. One of the guys had his thumb dug so hard into my bicep I could practically feel the bruise blooming under my skin. I didn't scream. Screaming would have just given Cordelia a thrill, and I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction.
They shoved me hard. My bare knees hit the cold marble floor with a sickening c***k.
Julian was sitting in his father's oversized leather armchair, lazily swirling a glass of Scotch. He looked completely bored. Cordelia was standing right next to him, gripping a manila envelope like it was a loaded gun.
"Three years," Cordelia spat, her voice vibrating with suppressed joy. "We let you into this family for three years, and this is how you repay us."
She threw the envelope. Photos scattered across the marble. They were grainy, paparazzi-style shots of me outside motels, bars, slipping into cars with random men.
I stared at them. The lighting was completely unnatural. In one of them, my head was visibly pasted onto a woman with a totally different body type. It was amateur hour.
"These are fake," I rasped, my throat tight.
Julian took a slow sip of his drink. "Obviously."
For one idiotic fraction of a second, I thought he was defending me. Then he set the glass down.
"I paid a guy to make them last Tuesday."
The bottom just fell out of my stomach. I looked at the man who had held my hand at my mother's funeral. The guy who swore I wasn't alone anymore. Nothing. His blue eyes were totally dead. Just flat glass.
"Why?" The word came out pathetic. I hated myself for asking.
Cordelia didn't miss a beat. "Vivienne is moving back from Paris. An annulment based on infidelity is fast, clean, and cheap. A divorce is messy."
Vivienne. The college ex. The name Julian used to mumble in his sleep while I lay next to him, pretending not to hear. I had pretended a lot of things to survive in this house.
"I'll fight it," I said, my voice shaking.
Julian finally looked at me directly. "Then the photos go to Page Six. Your reputation is gutted. You walk away with zero anyway." He pointed at a stack of legal documents sitting on the side table. "Don't make this a whole thing, Aurora. The papers are already signed. I had someone forge your signature this morning."
They didn't need my permission. They just wanted to watch me break.
I pushed myself up off the floor, my hands trembling as I tried to pull the torn nightgown up my shoulder. "I need my clothes."
"Sterling money bought those clothes," Cordelia smiled. It was a nasty, ugly smile. "You leave with what's on your back."
Julian didn't say a word. He just jerked his chin toward the front door.
The guards hauled me out by the arms and threw me onto the driveway. It was one of those violent, sudden summer storms. The freezing rain plastered the cheap silk to my skin in seconds. Right before the heavy oak doors slammed shut, I heard Vivienne’s high, clear laugh echoing from the top of the stairs.
I stood there shivering on the asphalt, watching the warm gold light spill out of the mansion windows. Three years of my life. Erased by a bad Photoshop job and a forged signature.
And then, my chest seized.
It wasn't heartbreak. It felt like I had swallowed a lit match. A sharp, violent heat ripped through my veins, shooting down my arms and flooding my fingertips. I looked down.
My hands were glowing.
Faint, silver-blue light was literally pulsing beneath my skin, tracing the exact map of my veins. Visible right through the rain. And then came the voice. Not a sound, but a heavy, echoing pressure right at the base of my skull.
Aurora Pierce. Blood of the Silver Wolf. Awakening in seventy-two hours.
I spun around, my bare feet slipping on the wet pavement. The street was empty. Just rain and the low rumble of thunder.
I looked up. The storm clouds had split apart, and the moon was staring down at me. It looked swollen. Sick. The color of rusted iron. And the weird heat under my skin was throbbing in time with it.
The pressure in my skull shifted into a direct command.
Seventy-two hours. Find the ring.
My mom’s ring. The cheap silver band she had shoved into my hand right before she died. Cordelia had called it "tacky trash" and banned me from wearing it around her friends, so I had stuffed it in the very back of my jewelry box.
Inside that house.
I turned back to look at the mansion. The lights were shutting off, one by one. Julian and Vivienne were probably popping champagne. Cordelia was probably ordering new sheets for my side of the bed.
I should have been completely crushed. I should have been a sobbing mess on the pavement after years of begging those psychopaths to love me. But beneath the freezing rain and the shock, that ancient, furious heat was spreading.
Seventy-two hours.
I wrapped my arms around my soaked, freezing body and took a step back toward the front door. No money. No phone. No shoes. Just a ticking clock in my blood and a ring I was not leaving behind.
Julian Sterling thought he had just thrown away a helpless, pathetic wife.
He really, really miscalculated.
