Chapter 9

Victoria's POV

My foster parents called while I was putting on my shoes.

Mom opened with small talk — the weather had been bad lately; my brother had a lot going on at school. I didn't respond, just waited for her to get to the point.

"Ella called again," she said finally. "Several times. She wanted to come back and stay. We turned her down, as you told us to."

"Good."

"It's just — your brother's tuition this semester is still short, and we were wondering if you could—"

"How much?"

"Twenty thousand would cover it."

I opened my banking app, entered the amount, and confirmed. Transfer complete. The whole thing took under two minutes.

"Did you get it?"

"Yes, yes, we got it. Victoria, your mom knows how hard you work—"

"It's fine." I hung up.

I set the phone down on the dresser and sat there for a moment. In the mirror, my makeup was neat, my hair pinned up without a single strand out of place.

Tired.

Every time I took one of these calls, I had to push something down. I'd been doing it for over twenty years. I was good at it by now, but it still wore on me.

I remembered when things weren't like this. My foster father ran an import-export business. We lived in a two-story house; there was always a hot meal on the table, and the heat worked in winter. I thought that was just how life was supposed to be.

Then the business collapsed.

The house was gone. The heat was gone. I finished middle school in a class of forty kids, wore sneakers from the clearance rack, worked the cheapest jobs I could find, and stretched every dollar until it had nothing left to give.

So when I saw my name on the DNA report, I didn't cry. I didn't shake.

I just turned the paper over and over in my hands for a long time.

This was mine. It had always been mine.

It had just been taken from me for twenty years.

The problem was that Ella hadn't fully disappeared yet. As long as she was still inside Sterling Estate, I would always be the one who came back — the biological daughter who felt like a stranger.

Richard looked at me with guilt, with the effort of someone trying to make up for lost time, but that kind of effort was fragile. Margaret had raised Ella for twenty years. A DNA report couldn't undo that kind of habit.

I needed Ella completely out of the picture.

My phone buzzed.

I picked it up—a message from Evan.

"Seven tonight. Come over for dinner. Don't make other plans."

No question mark. No "are you free." Not even my name. As if my schedule existed purely to accommodate his.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

Arrogant.

But I still had to go.

Evan Ashford. The Ashford family heir. He had never met Ella — to him, "the Sterling heiress" was just a title, a placeholder. When the swap happened, he didn't even blink. He went along with it without hesitation.

That told me he was smart. It also told me everything about the nature of this engagement — it had nothing to do with the person, and everything to do with the name.

The family had prepared this engagement for Ella.

But Ella wasn't Richard and Margaret's biological daughter. I was.

So this engagement had always been mine to begin with.

I had thought it through clearly before I moved. I ran every variable: Richard's obsession with reputation, the Sterling family's standing in old-money circles, the real damage that cancel culture could do to the upper class, Margaret's absolute priority on appearances.

I knew that the moment those photos appeared, their first instinct wouldn't be to protect Ella. It would be to cut their losses.

I also knew the photos couldn't actually leak. If the Sterling family faced a real public scandal, I'd be caught in it too. What I needed was a scalpel, not a fire.

The plan itself was clean. I'd already made sure Ella had the spiked wine — that part went exactly as intended.

What came after was supposed to be simple: a second drink waiting in the room, a man I'd arranged, a situation that would photograph itself. The photos would reach Richard, and all I'd have to do was stand nearby and say the right things.

The variable I hadn't accounted for was the driver.

Cade Reno.

I still haven't fully worked out how he ended up with that second drink. Ella had already taken the wine. The water sitting in that room was meant for the next step — not for some valet who had no business being anywhere near it.

Cade was a temp, an evening driver, a nobody.

He was never part of the plan. But he drank it, and he ended up in that room, and the whole thing moved in a direction I hadn't entirely mapped out.

The result was still right, though.

Ella was out. The photos existed. The scandal existed. Richard made the decision he was always going to make. Cade took her with him when he left, which was cleaner than anything I could have arranged — no legal complications, no ongoing press exposure, just a person disappearing through the estate gates.

The only thing that sat slightly wrong with me was the man himself.

In front of Richard, he said, "This is my fault. I'll take responsibility." One sentence. Nothing more.

I've watched a lot of people stand in front of Richard — lawyers, business partners, relatives asking for favors. Most of them clear their throat before they speak, or unconsciously tug at their sleeve.

Cade didn't do any of that. He just stood there, spine straight, chin level, eyes on Richard's face — not flinching, not yielding — and said it like he was stating something he had already settled in his own mind.

A driver, in debt, without a job, walking out with a former Sterling heiress.

There was a moment where I couldn't quite name what I felt.

I pushed it aside quickly. People from the bottom sometimes have that kind of stubborn pride — it holds for a while, and then reality grinds it down. Whatever was behind that look of his, it didn't change his position.

No assets. No connections. Nothing that could move any of the levers that actually ran this city.

What kind of waves could an off-the-books driver possibly make?

I checked my reflection in the mirror, smoothed my hair, and picked up my bag.

Ella was out. That was the fact, and it wasn't going to change. Whatever deviation Cade introduced as a variable, it was negligible in the outcome.

I walked out. The door closed behind me with a quiet, solid sound.

The hallway lights were warm yellow, pressing the shadows flat beneath my feet.

Seven o'clock. Go meet the arrogant fiancé. Keep the engagement exactly where it needed to be.

The rest was just a matter of time.