Chapter 1

I was an orphan, a fact the Thompsons never let me forget, not with words, but with the way they moved around me.

My parents died in a car crash, a crash tangled up with the Thompson family business, though no one ever spoke the details aloud.

They took me in, a gesture of goodwill, or perhaps guilt. I grew up in their grand house, a shadow to their son, Alex.

I loved Alex Thompson.

For years, that love was a silent hum beneath everything I did, every note I played on the old piano in their sunroom. He was my protector in those early days, chasing away childhood fears.

But when I finally found the courage to tell him, to lay my heart bare, he looked at me with a careful, distant pity.

"Ava," he said, his voice gentle but firm, "you're like a sister to me. Always."

It was a clean cut, that rejection. He said it more than once, each time a fresh wound. He saw me as family, nothing more. He made sure I understood.

To hammer the point home, Alex got a girlfriend, Chloe Vanderbilt. She was everything I wasn't, wealthy in her own right, polished, and publicly adored. He paraded her around, a bright, sharp shield against any lingering hope I might have. It worked. The sight of them together was a constant, painful reminder.

I was heartbroken, but I wouldn't shatter. I cried alone in my small attic room, the one overlooking the gardens. Then, I started to plan. I had to get out. I applied to a prestigious music program in New York, a dream I' d nurtured in secret.

A future where Alex wasn't the sun my world revolved around. That was the goal.

But I knew, with a chilling certainty that settled deep in my bones, that this wasn't the end of Alex and me. The story outline in my head, the one I couldn't stop replaying, always had a scene where he came back, full of regret, claiming he' d finally seen the truth. It was a bitter thought, that his realization would only come after he' d thoroughly broken me.

Then, Mrs. Thompson Sr., Alex' s grandmother, called me into her study. She was the matriarch, a woman of steel and pragmatism, her eyes missing nothing.

"Ava, dear," she began, her voice devoid of warmth but not unkind, "I' ve been thinking about your future."

She laid out a plan. An arranged marriage. To Noah Evans, heir to a tech fortune.

"It's a good match, Ava. He's a respectable young man. This will give you a clean break, a chance to study your music in New York without… distractions."

Her meaning was clear, get Ava away from Alex, maintain social order. It was a gilded cage, perhaps, but also an escape route. New York. The music program. Independence.

I looked at her, the architect of my new life.

"Yes, Mrs. Thompson," I said. "I agree."

It was a means to an end, a way out of the suffocating kindness of the Thompson household, away from the daily pain of seeing Alex with Chloe.