Chapter 1

To buy Liam that hazelnut cake from Ladurée, I scrubbed toilets for three months.

I wore a cheap, stain-covered jumpsuit and let the clerks watch me like a thief.

But I only felt sweetness.

Today was Liam's birthday. More importantly, the doctor had just emailed: a corneal donor match had been found.

Since the car accident took Liam's sight, the dazzling piano genius had died. What remained was a despairing man who hugged me at night and smashed cups in frustration.

"Elena, I'm a cripple," he would always say. "Only you don't despise a blind dog like me."

He said I was his eyes, his cane, his only reason to live.

To raise his astronomical surgery fees, I gave up my chance at grad school and became a cleaner.

I imagined his surprise when he regained his sight.

I reached the door, but the crisp laughter drifting from inside drenched me like a bucket of liquid nitrogen.

"How long are you going to keep pretending? I don't like you acting so deep with that toilet cleaner."

The woman's voice was coy.

Through the crack in the door, I saw a scene that made my blood run cold.

Liam, who should have been fumbling in the dark and needing me to feed him water, was holding Chloe, who was draped in a silk robe.

His eyes were clear and bright. Where was the blindness?

Chloe wrapped her arms around his neck, laughing like a flower in the wind. "If that idiot knew you weren't blind at all and she was cleaning toilets to support you, would she die of anger?"

Liam hugged Chloe's waist, his tone dripping with mockery:

"She deserves it. Who told her to surpass you everywhere at Parsons? Letting her serve me like a dog for three years—that's her punishment."

So that was it.

The tears, the despair, the "I'll die without you" of the last three years... it was all a script, carefully orchestrated to help his ex-girlfriend vent her jealousy.

My hands trembled as I pulled out my phone and found the number I had blocked three years ago.

The man who controlled half of New York.

I wiped my tears, my eyes shifting from shattered glass to icy resolve, and hit send:

"Sebastian, that marriage alliance... I accept."

The cake box dug painfully into my fingers.

"You're too bad," Chloe giggled. "She's the design genius Elena Sterling, after all. Willing to scrub toilets for you. If she knew you were using her mother's designs to help me draw this season's finale, would she have a stroke on the spot?"

My pupils contracted violently. I looked back inside.

Chloe picked up a dark brown leather notebook.

My mother's legacy. But for Liam, I had sold it.

Liam threw down his brush, his "blind" eyes burning with naked desire.

"Compared to that, I want to give you something else..."

They kissed as if no one else existed.

Disgusting.

Utterly disgusting.

I kicked the door open.

The solid wood door slammed against the wall with a deafening crash.

The intimacy inside came to a screeching halt.

Liam stared straight at me, his pupils dilated with panic.

"E... Elena? You... you're back? I... this..."

He scrambled to push Chloe away, but she didn't cooperate.

She stood up slowly, smoothing her dress, wearing a look of amusement.

Liam stood there stiffly. The "patient" who always ordered me around now looked like a caught clown.

He tried to walk toward me, hands subconsciously reaching forward, attempting to maintain the persona.

"Elena, listen to me..."

"Save it," I cut him off. "Are you trying to tell me that Chloe sitting on your lap kissing you is some new type of physical therapy for the optic nerve?"

Liam froze.

"Or," I stepped closer, staring dead into his eyes, "did God happen to kiss your eyes today and restore your sight?"

The lie was torn open, revealing the maggot-infested truth beneath.

Liam seemed to give up the struggle in that instant.

I stared at the designs in Chloe's hand. "My mother's manuscript. Give it back."

Chloe raised an eyebrow as if she'd heard a funny joke.

She deliberately held the manuscript high, shaking it. The sound of the flipping pages stabbed at my eardrums.

"Give it back to you? Why?" Chloe sneered. "Liam gave this to me. Do your toilet-scrubbing hands even deserve to touch it?"

"That is mine," I gritted my teeth.

That was the last thing my mother left me. I couldn't let it fall into the hands of people like this.

"It's in my hands now, so it's mine. But, since you want it..." Chloe rolled her eyes, corners of her mouth twitching into a cruel smile. "Three hundred thousand."

"Give me three hundred thousand, and I'll give this pile of trash back to you. Otherwise..."

She walked toward the fireplace. The flames danced just centimeters from the paper.

"I'll burn it."

She knew perfectly well I couldn't even scrape together three hundred dollars in my bank account right now.

I looked at Liam.

The man who once claimed "anything you want, as long as I have it" didn't say a single word for me.

"Fine. Three hundred thousand. I'll buy it," I spoke calmly.

I just wanted to take back the last memory my mother left me, and then have nothing to do with this pile of disgusting trash in front of me for the rest of my life.

"Are you crazy?" Chloe burst into incredulous laughter. "Are you going to sell your body or a kidney? Three hundred thousand? Are you daydreaming?"