Chapter 1

The migraine started as a dull throb behind my right eye, then it exploded into a blinding white light.

I woke up on the cold hardwood floor of my tiny apartment, the city lights of New York blinking through the window. My phone was buzzing on the counter. It was Liam. I ignored it, my head feeling like a shattered piece of glass.

The next day, a doctor with a kind face and sad eyes told me the news.

Glioblastoma. An inoperable brain tumor.

He gave me less than a year.

I walked out of the hospital in a daze, the diagnosis a silent scream in my mind. I told no one. What was the point?

My phone rang again. This time I answered.

"Where the hell have you been, Ava?" Liam' s voice was sharp, cold.

"I wasn't feeling well."

"I don't pay you to feel unwell. Chloe needs her medication. The specialty import. You were supposed to pick it up two hours ago. Get to her penthouse. Now."

He hung up.

I was the daughter of the Vanderbilts' late housekeeper, and for a decade, I' d been in love with the heir who was my only childhood friend. Now, I was just the help.

I took a cab to Chloe' s lavish Manhattan penthouse. Liam was waiting, his face a mask of fury.

"You're late," he snapped, not even looking at me.

Chloe glided into the room, a picture of fragile beauty. "Oh, Ava, you look terrible. Are you alright?"

Her concern was a performance. I just handed her the bag with the medication.

As I turned to leave, Chloe was directing movers with a large, abstract sculpture. "A little to the left," she instructed, then she glanced at me. With a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, she shifted her weight, bumping the sculpture's base.

It tilted. I stumbled back to avoid it, my foot catching on the edge of the grand staircase. I tumbled down the marble steps, my body hitting each one with a sickening thud.

I lay at the bottom, a wave of nausea and pain washing over me.

Liam rushed over, but not to me. He knelt beside the sculpture, running his hands over a barely visible scratch on its bronze surface.

"This was a million-dollar piece," he said, his voice tight with anger. He didn't even look at me.

My vision swam. On Chloe' s polished desk, I saw a familiar sight: my screenplay. The one I' d poured my soul into for years. My one hope of escaping this life.

"What is that doing here?" I whispered, the words catching in my throat.

Liam finally turned his cold eyes on me. "Chloe needs a passion project. Something to launch her producing career. I have a key to your place, remember? For emergencies."

He said it so casually, as if he had every right.

"She thought your little story had potential," he added. "Consider it a gift."

The shock, the fall, the tumor-it was all too much. The world dissolved into blackness.