Chapter 1

For two days, I couldn't walk right.

My legs ached, a deep, tired pain that settled in my bones. Ethan Vanderbilt liked his weekends demanding. He liked them private and intense.

I was his secret, the girl he kept in a high-rise apartment with a view of Central Park. The girl he flew in from New Orleans three years ago.

The arrangement was simple. He paid for my brother Leo' s life. In return, I gave him mine.

I was standing in his vast, cold kitchen, trying to find the ibuprofen, when I heard their voices from the living room. Ethan and his friends, all with the same Ivy League drawl and expensive watches.

"So, Ethan, who' s the new girl? The one from the office?" one of them asked, his voice slick with amusement.

Ethan laughed. It was a sound I knew well, the one he used before he said something cruel.

"Chloe? Yeah, she' s something else. Fresh. Clean. You know?"

A pause. Then, the inevitable question. "What about the sax player? Maya?"

The air went still. I stopped breathing, my hand frozen over the pill bottle.

"Her?" Ethan' s voice was laced with contempt. "She' s old news. Practice. You can play any tune on her, and she' ll never complain. Too desperate."

Their laughter echoed off the marble floors. It was sharp and ugly.

"That girl from the swamp?" another friend chimed in. "Seriously, Ethan, what do you even see in her?"

"Convenience," Ethan said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "And besides, she's not much to look at. Honestly, I could show you some pictures, but why bother? She's nothing special."

My heart didn't break. It just stopped.

The cold from the floor seeped into my feet, climbing up my legs until my whole body felt like ice.

He thought I was desperate. He thought I was nothing.

For three years, I had swallowed his disrespect, endured his moods, and pretended his cruelty was just a part of his powerful personality. I did it all for Leo.

But hearing him say it, so casually, to his friends... it was different.

He didn't just see me as a transaction. He saw me as worthless. A thing to be used and discarded.

I finally found the pills and dry-swallowed two, the bitterness coating my tongue.

The truth was a bitter pill, too.

He was right. I was desperate. But not for him.

Never for him.