Chapter 5

Ella's POV

He sent back one line. Don't worry, ma'am. You won't ever see me again.

Once I'd scrubbed every record, another notice pinged onto the screen—an invoice for Blake's spending aboard some other yacht, a long string of numbers, laughably over the top.

I settled it without a second thought. Then I quietly shifted a large sum out of the trust and into my own private account. With Grandfather bedridden, the quarterly signing authority had fallen to me, and the family—too busy scheming among themselves—hadn't yet thought to revoke it. Better still, every dollar was booked as Blake's extravagance, so the ledgers showed nothing but a besotted bride spoiling her fiancé. Nothing anyone would bother tracing back to me.

My fiancé was nothing but a tool for moving money. The more reckless he got, the better it suited me.

That way, everyone would take me for a lovesick fool, bleeding the Hartford fortune into my fiancé's hands dollar by dollar.

Grandfather was gravely ill, and I had no one left to stand behind me. The family had their own plan already—wrap me up like a parcel, marry me off, and call it a business alliance.

So I picked Blake Shaw myself. His family ranked the lowest, and he was the dullest of the lot—arrogant, overbearing, and for exactly that reason, the easiest to steer.

I lit another cigarette and studied myself in the mirror.

Slim waist, long legs, the silk nightgown clinging to every line of me. The gown did half the work for me.

Maybe it was time to buy a few plainer, more innocent things.

I watched the woman in the glass and pressed the upturned corners of my mouth down, bit by bit. In no time the mirror held a different face—harmless, soft around the edges, girlish. Even the sharpness in my eyes went blank and guileless, the kind of blank that says she's never learned how the world works.

Two tears slid down from the corners of my eyes, right on cue.

I looked at the woman in the mirror and said softly, "Uncle Cole, you like this Ella, don't you?"

Cole's POV

The car was quiet on the way back.

I dragged my thumb across the knuckle of my index finger, once, then again. An old habit, something my hands did when I was thinking. I'd never managed to break it.

"Did the Shaw family send me an invitation before this?" I said abruptly.

Ryan answered almost without pausing. "Yes. Twice. You declined both. They sent a third this time—three days from now, for the Shaw matriarch's birthday." He hesitated, keeping his voice level and professional. "The head of the household made a point of mentioning something. Said they'd turned up some old photographs of you, from back when you left for the army. He'd like to return them to you in person."

Old photographs.

I knew exactly what that meant. They were fishing, using the one stretch of my past I least wanted dredged up as bait.

Two weeks ago, I'd have turned it down without blinking.

But now.

I thought again of that head bowed low to the floor, wet lashes lifting as she called me Uncle Cole. James's daughter. Married into a house like that.

"The dinner in three days," I said. "I'll go."

Ryan paused. But he asked nothing further, only dipped his head and noted the change to my schedule.

Good. The people I keep never ask what they shouldn't.

Ella's POV

Three days later, the Shaw dinner blazed with light.

I'd worn a plain, understated gown, my makeup soft, my hair pinned up neat and tidy. As Hartford's perfect heir—and Blake Shaw's fiancée in name only—these events, all painted smiles and small talk, were something I couldn't skip.

I carried a glass of champagne I had no intention of drinking and drifted through the garden, bored out of my mind. The moment I could decently slip away, I was gone. I didn't want to spend a minute more here than I had to.

Then I rounded a corner and saw Zoey.

She was tucked into a corner, voice dropped low, snapping orders at a few of her family's bulky bodyguards. Talking fast, one finger jabbing again and again in my direction.

I raised an eyebrow.

Interesting.

Did she really think I couldn't guess what she was planning?

I kept walking, glass in hand, and instead of turning off I strolled unhurriedly toward that glass greenhouse. I'd scoped the corner out the last time I was here—the cameras didn't reach it.

I was going to give her the chance.

I hadn't been inside the greenhouse long before the footsteps caught up. Four bodyguards filed in, closing around me on both sides, blocking the door.

I set my glass down gently. My shoulders began to tremble, and I let my voice go small.

"What… what's going on?"

The one in front bared his teeth in a grin. "Sorry about this, Miss Hartford. You won't be walking out of here today."

I backed away, step by step, retreating into the corner, into that dead zone the cameras couldn't see. Right on cue, my eyes brimmed with tears.

"So… what are you going to do to me?"

He rolled his neck, knuckles cracking as he flexed them, and closed in. The other three fanned out around me, palms opening and closing. Ready to move.

The instant his hand reached for my shoulder—

The panic dropped off my face.

My eyes went cold.

I twisted aside, dodging that hand, and drove my elbow clean into his throat. He made a strangled sound and dropped to his knees clutching his neck before he could get a word out.

The second one lunged. I caught his wrist, wrenched it, and used his own momentum to kick the back of his knee. He folded instantly, face slamming into the flower rack.

Start to finish, under ten seconds. All four of them flat on the ground.

I bent down, pried the comms unit out of one man's hand, and crushed it under my heel. Then I went through them one by one, making sure not a single one was still conscious.

I rolled my shoulders. Too long since I'd had a chance to move.

If the people from the underground fights ever found out—that "E," top three in the country, the only female heavyweight on the entire East Coast, had taken three whole seconds to put down a few rent-a-thugs—they'd never let me hear the end of it.

I straightened up, shook out my skirt, and slid the wide-eyed, harmless little expression back onto my face.

But before I could quite wipe the edge from my eyes—

Footsteps.

Zoey came rounding the corner a moment later, chin high, no doubt here to inspect the damage.

She'd run it through her head a hundred times by now—me cornered, cowering, begging for mercy.

But the second she took in what the greenhouse actually held, that smirk froze on her face. The color drained, leaving her sickly white.

Four bodyguards—her own—sprawled every which way across the floor.

And me, standing in the middle of it, my skirt spotless, not a single wrinkle out of place, my head bowed as I took my time wiping my fingers clean.

I lifted my eyes and smiled at her.

There wasn't a trace of panic in that smile. Not a shred of the weakling she'd expected.

Zoey's lips quivered. She staggered back a step, nearly turning an ankle in those heels. She stared at me like she'd seen a ghost, her throat working for a long moment before she finally forced out a single cracked, shrieking word—

"Oh my God! Ella! What have you done?!"