
For seven years, I designed every collection that made Eternal Vow famous. The public knew its CEO, Elena Vance. Almost no one knew my name. I was just the man waiting for her at home. My sketches left our apartment under Elena’s name and returned as magazine covers, award winners and sold-out launches. Each time another piece went out under her name, I told myself we were building the same future. Then I saw the pink diamond I had made for our anniversary on her finger while she kissed billionaire investor Julian Sterling. When she called me her obedient little tool, her friends laughed with her. Elena came home expecting that tool to finish the jewelry for her century wedding. I agreed. I was already preparing a different wedding gift: proof that every valuable design in her empire belonged to me.

The invitation called it the jewel of the season: Eternal Vow's ten-year anniversary gala in the gold-and-ivory ballroom of the Sterling Grand. I stood against a marble pillar with a glass I never touched and watched the cameras find their subject. Elena descended the staircase in a column of pale silk. The necklace she wore was mine, three weeks of sketches and a platinum filament I had spent two days perfecting. The crowd applauded the name on the brand, and the woman on the stairs knew better than anyone who had shaped the light around her throat. I was the man waiting for her at home. Almost no one in that room knew my name either. For seven years, I had designed every collection that made Eternal Vow famous. My sketches left our apartment under Elena's name and returned as magazine
