Chapter 2

Flora's hands brushed over the cross-engraved cufflink; the cold metal pulled her memory back to the rainy night at JFK Airport three years ago—when she had ended things with Esteban Kirkland.

She threw off the hospital blanket, ignoring the sharp sting of blood backing up into her IV tube, and stepped barefoot onto the cold floor tiles. Walking to the floor-to-ceiling window, she looked out over the glittering lights of Manhattan.

Heavy footsteps stopped just outside her door, followed by the low rumble of two bodyguards talking. Flora moved silently to the door, pressing her ear against the wood and holding her breath.

"Whose black Agusta helicopter was that on the helipad earlier? Even the Coast Guard didn't dare block its flight path."

"Keep your voice down," the second guard hissed. "Don't you recognize the Kirkland conglomerate emblem? The boss of Wall Street jumped into the ocean himself to pull her out."

Flora's pupils shrank, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs. It really was Esteban. Despite three years of silence, the billionaire head of the Kirkland family was still watching her from the shadows.

Three years. She had given him three whole years of her life, and left the night another woman's name lit up his phone. Not one word of explanation—she had simply disappeared.

She walked back to the bed, picked up her phone, and opened her blocked contacts list. Her thumb hovered over the number that had been blacklisted for three years, her throat tight, before she finally locked the screen without dialing.

Kizzie had been taken in by the Jensens at twelve. At eighteen she slipped into Eloy's bed; he shipped her to Europe the first morning after. To bury the scandal, he married Flora six months later—because she had the same eyes. Same cold, clear shape. In three years he had never once looked at those eyes and seen her.

A second later, the screen lit up with an incoming FaceTime call from her best friend, Chloe Sullivan.

Flora smoothed her expression and tapped accept. Chloe's anxious face filled the screen inside her law office.

"Flora! The news said the Jensen yacht capsized off Long Island. Are you okay?"

"I'm alive," Flora said, lowering her eyes with a cold smile. "But I need you to do something for me right now."

"Name it. Even if you want me to blow up the Jensen Enterprises tower, I'm in," Chloe said through gritted teeth. As Manhattan's sharpest divorce attorney, she had hated Eloy from day one.

"Draft a no-fault divorce agreement demanding half of our marital assets, along with my resignation letter as Chief Compliance Officer of Jensen Enterprises."

Chloe froze on the other end, her coffee mug slipping an inch in her hand.

"You're divorcing that bastard Eloy? He'll never sign it. He treats you like his personal property!"

"I'm divorcing him, Chloe. I've thought it through."

"He will sign it, as long as he doesn't know what he's putting his name on," Flora said, glancing at the five-million-dollar check on the nightstand. They quickly went over the legal clauses, and Flora instructed her to bury the divorce papers deep inside a three-hundred-page annual corporate compliance filing.

After hanging up, Flora sat on the edge of the bed and tapped her Apple Watch, connecting it to the hospital's secure Wi-Fi.

As Chief Compliance Officer, she held full administrative access to every layer of the company’s internal system. She typed in an encrypted command, pulled three years of trust fund transfers and core compliance vulnerability records, and saved them directly to her private cloud drive.

When the progress bar hit one hundred percent, the electronic lock on the ward door beeped.

Flora shut off her watch screen in a flash, dropping back onto the pillows and closing her eyes just as the door opened.

Eloy's personal assistant walked in and placed several luxury shopping bags on the sofa.

"Ma'am, Mr. Jensen instructed that you must be discharged tomorrow morning to attend Old Mrs. Eleanor's weekend family dinner on Long Island."

Flora let out a raspy sound of acknowledgment, keeping her breathing slow and shallow.

Once the door clicked shut, she sat up and pulled a velvet box from the top bag. Inside lay a heavy pigeon-blood ruby necklace—Eloy's standard routine of tossing her a bone after slapping her in the face.

She had found another velvet box in his closet months ago—one she had never been given. Not her size.

Her stomach churned with disgust. She stood up and dropped the box straight into the metal trash can by the bathroom.

The next morning, Flora signed her discharge papers and climbed into the back of the town car heading toward the Jensen estate on Long Island.

The rain had cleared, leaving pale sunlight bouncing off the wet asphalt of the expressway. Flora pulled out her phone, snapped a casual photo of the Long Island coastline through the window, and posted it to her Instagram without a caption.

Less than five seconds later, a notification banner dropped down from the top of her screen.

She tapped it, and her breath caught in her throat.

A private account with a blank avatar and zero followers—an account that followed only her—had just liked the photo. The handle was simply two letters: "E. K."