Chase Sterling always felt like furniture. The kind you don't notice, the kind that's easy to shove in a corner and forget. He was used to it: people looked right through him, brushed him off like lint. But it only takes one phone call to erase a lifetime of being overlooked. When his estranged family meets a tragic end, Chase suddenly finds himself in charge of the sprawling Sterling fortune. Turns out, riches aren't the only thing the family left him. There's a curse running through his blood, warping love into something hungry and dangerous, impossible to escape.

Vivian Ashford never set out to blow Chase's life to smithereens. Just one decision (a sharp, ruthless move at graduation) was all it took to set their worlds spinning out of control. While Vivian soaks up the Hollywood limelight and collects red-carpet headlines, Chase slips into his new role as Manhattan's most intimidating heir. But no matter how far they run, something keeps yanking them back together, like a stitch in an old wound that refuses to heal.

Isabella Morrison does not do the things women usually do when they meet me.


This is not vanity. It's observation, the same observation I apply to everything, and the pattern has been consistent enough over the years to function as a reliable baseline: women in my orbit tend to perform one of a small number of responses when the introduction happens, none of which are bad and all of which are, at this point, entirely predictable. There is the response that is warm and open and slightly too eager, which I find exhausting. There is the response that performs indifference as a strategy, which I find transparent. There is the response that is calculating and deliberate and interested in the Sterling name specifically, which I find dull in a way I don't blame anyone for. And there is the response that is genuinely nervous, which I find the most honest and the most uncomfortable.


Chapter 242 - Isabella