Chapter 2

The air in my lungs was completely gone, and my brain was screaming from lack of oxygen—a sharp, ringing sound drowning out everything else.

I knew right then—counting on Liam was a lost cause. I had to save myself.

I slid off the chair, stumbling, my knees slamming hard into the floor.

With trembling hands, I clawed desperately at the bag sitting on the chair beside me.

It was a Hermès Birkin—platinum edition. To keep Liam from getting suspicious, I'd lied and told him it was just a cheap knockoff worth a few hundred bucks.

Inside that bag, I always kept an EpiPen. My lifeline.

"Medicine... I need my medicine..." I forced the broken syllables out from deep in my throat, my fingers finally finding the zipper.

I yanked it open with everything I had left, my hand closing around the plastic tube.

The instant my fingers wrapped around that pen, a hand—nails painted blood-red—shot out and snatched it right out of my grip.

"Ooh, what's this little toy?" Mia twirled the life-saving pen between her fingers, looking down at me like I was something pathetic crumpled on the floor.

"Give... it... back..." I choked out, curling in on myself in agony, reaching toward her with a hand gone red from strain.

My vision was already going black at the edges, cold sweat dripping in fat drops onto the floor beneath me.

"Mia, don't bother with her junk." Liam walked over, wrapping his arm around Mia's waist without so much as glancing at me. "She actually brought a prop just to fake being sick? That's disgusting. This is the most important day of my life, and you're seriously trying to ruin it for me right now?"

"Liam, don't say that. What if she's actually sick?" Mia said, all fake concern—while her fingers "accidentally" loosened their grip.

The EpiPen dropped to the floor.

"Oops. My bad." Mia gasped, way too dramatically.

Then, right in front of me, she lifted one of her red-soled heels and brought it down—dead center—on the pen's fragile plastic casing.

She even ground the toe of her heel back and forth. Slowly. Deliberately.

Clear liquid—the adrenaline—leaked out through the cracked shell, seeping into the gaps in the floor.

That was my last chance. Gone.

I stared at that puddle like the world had just ended, my heart feeling like it had been crushed in an icy fist.

Mia crouched down next to me, leaning in close, and whispered—soft enough that only I could hear:

"You looking all helpless and furious like this? Makes me so happy. Just hurry up and die already. Once you're gone, it'll be perfect—me and Liam. He's worth way too much now for a broke little assistant like you anyway."

She stood back up, looping her arm through Liam's, her voice turning sugary sweet. "Liam, it's so stuffy in here. Let's go dance over there instead."

"Sure. Don't let this psycho ruin our night." Liam shot me one last disgusted look before turning away, walking off without a shred of mercy.

The crowd around us dispersed too. Nobody wanted to lift a finger for some "attention-seeking lunatic" faking an illness.

My consciousness was slipping fast, darkness swallowing my vision whole.

My throat was completely sealed shut now, my heart hammering wildly from the oxygen deprivation—like it could burst at any second.

Was I really going to die here? At the hands of a vain, selfish piece of trash and some poisonous gold-digger?

No.

One second before the darkness took me completely, I bit down hard on the tip of my tongue—trading pain for one last flicker of clarity.

With everything I had left, I lifted my left hand, my thumb pressing down hard on the hidden button on the side of my watch.

Three seconds. Held down.

That button connected straight to a top-tier security firm on Wall Street—and to my mother. The head of the Victoria Group. It was the family's highest-level SOS alert.

Once triggered, it meant one thing: the sole heir to the empire was facing a life-or-death emergency.

A faint vibration pulsed against my wrist in response.

Then my hand went limp, falling away completely, and I sank into an endless, all-consuming darkness.

'Liam... Mia...' I repeated their names in my head, cold and merciless, my last conscious thought before the void took me.

'If I survive this... I'm sending you both straight to hell.'