Chapter 3

The rain over the Queens public cemetery was persistent and cold, turning the dirt around the fresh graves into gray sludge.

Hazel knelt in the mud, laying a single bundle of cheap white daisies before a small granite headstone. The stone bore only a name and two dates: Liam Hayes, 1998-2024.

"You should have waited for me," Hazel whispered, her fingers resting against the wet stone. Her voice was cracked, barely audible above the drumming rain. "I had almost saved enough for your specialist. Why didn't you wait?"

Her jeans were soaked through at the knees. The icy water seeped into her skin, numbing the pain in her sprained ankle, but doing nothing to dull the hollow ache behind her ribs.

Her phone buzzed violently in her jacket pocket.

The screen flashed with the name Chloe Sterling, her stepsister. Hazel pressed decline.

Two seconds later, the phone buzzed again with a text:

"Answer the call, or I call Greenbrier Care Home right now and cancel Julian's monthly nursing fee."

Hazel's hand froze. The blood drained from her face. She hit the green button and brought the phone to her ear.

"What do you want, Chloe?" Hazel's voice was dead and level.

"Oh, look who decided to pick up," Chloe's high-pitched, mocking voice came through the speaker. "Finished crying over your dead loser boyfriend yet?"

"Speak, or I hang up."

"Dad needs you at the manor. Right now," Chloe said, her voice turning sharp and entitled. "The Montgomery family sent their formal marriage proposal. Dad decided that you're the one who's going to marry into their house."

Hazel stood up from the mud, leaning her weight onto her good leg. "You were the one boasting about marrying a Montgomery for the last six months. What does your social-climbing marriage have to do with me?"

"Because their old lady assigned us Nathaniel Montgomery!" Chloe shrieked, losing her composure. "He's an adopted, unranked nobody who doesn't even hold a seat on the board! He spends all his time painting in Europe and doesn't get a single dime from the family trust! I am the real daughter of the Sterling house. I'm not throwing my life away on a broke outcast!"

"Then tell Victor to reject them," Hazel said coldly. "I am not your substitute."

"You don't have a choice, Hazel," Chloe sneered, her confidence returning. "Mom is already on her way to Julian's facility. If you aren't standing in the living room in forty minutes, he'll be out on the street with his sketchbooks in a cardboard box. Let's see how long an autistic freak survives in a state asylum."

"Chloe, don't you dare touch him!" Hazel yelled, but the line went dead.

Hazel stared at the black screen, her chest heaving. The rain beat down on her face, mixing with the hot tears spilling from her eyes. Julian Sterling, her younger brother, was nineteen. He could barely speak five sentences to strangers, and he panicked if his routine was broken by ten minutes. He wouldn't last a day in a public ward.

She turned to Liam's grave, pressed her muddy fingers to the stone one last time, and turned away.

She limped out to the cemetery gate and flagged down a yellow cab.

"Upper East Side," Hazel told the driver, tossing a crumpled twenty-dollar bill onto the front passenger seat. "Hurry."

The cab crawled through the Manhattan traffic, the wipers squeaking against the windshield. Hazel pulled her damp coat tighter around herself, her mind racing.

Victor Sterling, her stepfather, had taken over her biological father's estate ten years ago, slowly draining the trust fund left for Julian until there was nothing left. For the past four years, Hazel had worked sixteen-hour days as a stylist just to cover the difference in Julian's private care facility bills.

The cab pulled up before the wrought-iron gates of the Sterling residence in Westchester.

Hazel pushed open the door, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in her ankle, and marched up the stone driveway. She shoved the front door open, leaving wet, muddy tracks across the polished Italian marble floor.

In the living room, Victor sat in a leather armchair, swirling two fingers of scotch. Beside him stood Chloe, wearing a pristine cream cashmere sweater, filing her manicured nails.

Victor looked up, his face hardening as he saw Hazel's disheveled hair and mud-stained clothes.

"You look like a gutter rat," Victor said, setting his glass on the side table with a heavy thud. "You finally decided to show up."