Chapter 2

My eyes landed on her throat—a dazzling ruby necklace rested against her collarbone, each pigeon-blood stone catching the light and throwing off sharp, brilliant flares.

My pupils contracted.

Blood Rose. The necklace I'd spent eight months designing.

Last winter, Julian had seen the sketches.

"Sweetheart, this piece was made for you. No one else could wear it. I'm going to bid on it. Our five-year anniversary present."

I'd laughed and pushed him away. "You're buying my own design to give back to me? That's just money going in circles."

"It's different." He'd held my gaze, his expression so earnest it could drown you. "I want the whole world to know my wife deserves the finest things on earth."

Last month, he'd paid two million dollars for a ruby necklace at Sotheby's. He'd come home with a velvet box hidden behind his back, eyes bright with a secret.

I'd thought he was planning a surprise.

But now.

That necklace was hanging around another woman's neck.

Chloe caught the direction of my stare and ran a finger slowly along the stones. "My fiancé's gift. Two million dollars."

She tilted her chin. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

A wave of nausea surged up my throat.

I let out a short, cold laugh. "Funny thing about that necklace—it was designed by Julian's wife. You're out here wearing his wife's own creation around your neck. You don't find that a little ironic?"

The smirk on Chloe's face froze.

Then it came back harder.

"So what?" Her voice sharpened into something vicious and satisfied. "Instead of pointing fingers at me, maybe she should've asked herself why she couldn't hold onto her own man. Why he'd rather give her necklace to me."

She crouched down to my eye level.

"Because she got old. Boring. She stopped being worth his time. You understand?"

She pulled out her phone without taking her eyes off me, her voice melting into something disgustingly soft. "Baby, some crazy woman won't leave me alone at the club. Come quick?"

The message sent. She tilted the screen toward my face.

"He's on his way." The sweetness dropped out of her voice instantly. "When he gets here, you are done."

I was still forming my response when Eleanor shuddered violently against me.

"Grandma—" I looked down, and my chest seized.

Her face had gone beyond purple. It was gray now, the gray of ash, of something already spent. Her lips were cracked and dark. Her eyes had gone half-closed, her pupils unfocused, her chest barely moving.

Her fingers found my sleeve and clenched with what little strength she had left.

"Again," she breathed.

In her eyes—pain I'd never seen before. And fury.

And then I remembered.

Eleanor had spent her whole life hating one thing above everything else.

Forty years ago, her husband had taken up with his secretary. The woman got pregnant and showed up demanding he leave Eleanor for his real love.

Eleanor hadn't screamed. Hadn't begged. She'd signed the divorce papers in silence, then spent the next decade systematically dismantling his position in the company until she'd pushed him out with nothing.

The child that secretary had been carrying—that was Julian's father.

Eleanor, in her mercy, had decided the boy wasn't to blame. She'd taken him in, given him the best of everything—schools, connections, a good marriage.

But what was in the blood stayed in the blood.

He'd cheated too.

Eleanor had cleaned up that mess as well. Reclaimed the company. Rebuilt.

And Julian had been her last hope. Raised under her own roof, given every advantage, married to a woman she'd judged worthy—someone with her own mind, her own means.

She'd believed this time would be different.

It wasn't.

Eleanor closed her eyes. One slow tear tracked down from the corner.

"I'm getting you out of here," I whispered, fighting back everything I was feeling.

I got my arm under hers and began easing her up from the floor.

Chloe stepped directly into our path.

She glanced at her cameraman and gave a small nod.

He'd already moved around behind Eleanor.

He drew his foot back and kicked—hard—into the back of her knees.

"No—!"

Eleanor pitched forward. I caught her weight for half a second before we both went down, my knees cracking against the marble, black blooming at the edges of my vision.

Chloe's laughter hit me before the pain did.

"Are you watching this, guys?!" She was playing to the camera again, one hand pressed to her mouth in exaggerated amusement. "This is what you get when you come for me. Two washed-up women think they can take me on?"

She stepped closer. Looked down at Eleanor.

Then she crouched.

And slapped her across the face.

The sound of it went through me like a blade.

Eleanor's head snapped to the side. Blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. Her whole body trembled, but she couldn't even cry out—there was no air left for it.

My mind went white.

Then the fury hit, and it burned out everything else.

"What is wrong with you!" I lunged toward Eleanor to cover her, but Chloe's two friends had my shoulders pinned before I could get there, wrenching me back.

Chloe crouched again and grabbed Eleanor's jaw, forcing her head up.

"You were pretty tough a few minutes ago, old woman. Where did all that go? Show me again."

Eleanor couldn't speak. Her lips had gone the color of bruises. Her eyes were rolling back. The rise and fall of her chest had become so faint I could barely see it.

I thrashed against the hands holding me. "She's dying! Call an ambulance! She just had bypass surgery—"

I looked straight at Chloe. "When Julian gets here and finds out what you did to his grandmother, do you honestly think he'll protect you?"

Something shifted in Chloe's face—one flicker of uncertainty before the mask came back.

"Please." She waved a hand. "She's faking. She was screaming at me two minutes ago. I'm not falling for the fragile old lady act."

She studied Eleanor's deteriorating color for a moment. Her eyes moved slowly down the hallway.

To the frosted glass door at the far end.

The cryo-chamber. A recovery suite the club offered its top-tier members—muscle therapy for athletes, the kind that dropped to negative one-forty degrees Celsius.

"Drag them in there," Chloe said. "Let them cool down for a while."