Chapter 2

The front lawn of the Shaw estate was packed.

Cameras.

Champagne.

Two hundred of Manhattan’s finest craning their necks to see the “wedding of the year.”

Diana did not trust me not to make a scene.

She had stationed two staffers outside my bedroom door.

The second I walked up, they blocked me.

“Miss Willow, Mrs. Shaw said you should lie down. Take a breath.”

I looked them dead in the eye.

“This is my room.”

They smiled.

They did not move.

“Mrs. Shaw just wants what’s best for you. Miss Vivvy said the last test is very delicate. If you show up, it won’t work.”

Right.

The tests.

Ninety-nine of them.

Test number one: Vivienne “twisted her ankle” at a charity gala.

Adrian carried her out in his tux.

Left me at the valet stand.

Diana said he was just being a gentleman.

Test seventeen: Vivienne “fell” into the pool at the Hamptons house.

She and I both screamed for help.

Adrian dove in — and came up with her.

Charles said she was closer.

He was just reacting.

Test fifty-three: Vivienne “caught the flu.”

She begged Adrian to make her chicken soup himself.

He sat by her bed all night.

I waited on the porch until sunrise.

When he finally came out, his first words to me were:

“Your sister’s fragile, Willow. Why don’t you take better care of her?”

Test ninety-eight: Vivienne told him her ex-husband was “dying.”

She begged Adrian to fly with her to Aspen for a “healing retreat.”

Three days.

When they came back, she had a diamond pendant around her neck.

Adrian said he grabbed it at the airport.

He told her to model it for me.

I found out later that it was his grandmother’s.

The one meant for his future wife.

They spent ninety-eight tests falling in love in plain sight.

I spent ninety-eight tests convincing myself I was crazy.

Now, for the finale, they had taken my dress and my limo too.

“Move.”

I pulled the diamond pin out of my updo and pressed the point against my own throat.

The two staffers went pale.

Ava gasped. “Miss —!”

“There are two hundred guests out there,” I said, calm as ice. “You want to be the ones who let the Shaws’ second daughter bleed out on her wedding day? Be my guest.”

They stepped aside.

I locked the door behind me.

I pulled the tiara off my head.

Dropped it on the vanity like it was a candy wrapper.

The girl in the mirror was eighteen years old.

No dark circles yet.

No calluses on her fingers from thirty years of running someone else’s empire.

Ava watched me strip out of the wedding dress and pull on jeans and a plain sweater.

“Miss… what are you doing?”

“Leaving. New York. Tonight.”

Her eyes went huge.

“But — your passport, your ID — your mother has them! And if Adrian figures out it’s not you in that limo, he’ll come looking!”

I zipped up my duffel.

“Then we move fast.”

Thirty years of running that man’s household taught me one thing.

I know how to take what is mine without anyone noticing.

And Diana?

Diana’s hiding spots never change.

She thought I would cry.

Sulk.

Beg.

She never, in a million years, thought I would walk.