"Ugh... Where the hell am I?"

Isabella's voice came out cracked and hoarse, and she regretted opening her eyes the second she did — sunlight stabbed through her skull, her temples throbbing like a drumline. Her whole body felt like it had been run over, limbs too heavy to lift.

She squinted around the room. Floor-to-ceiling windows. White linen curtains. Her bra lying in a heap on the carpet, tangled — inexplicably — with a navy silk tie.

She stared at that tie until her chest went tight, something between nausea and pure animal fear climbing up her throat.

Last night had been her eighteenth birthday. Olivia had thrown her a small party, and at midnight she'd swept over with a glass of champagne, smiling like she meant it. "Happy birthday, Izzy. This one's on me — drink up."

Isabella hadn't thought twice. She'd downed it.

Everything after that came in shards. The world tilting. Olivia's hand steadying her — "let me get you somewhere to lie down" — being half-carried down a hallway, the soft beep of a keycard, then darkness.

Weight. She remembered struggling, remembered saying no — and the person on top of her not seeming to hear it at all. Again. And again. Until she blacked out somewhere inside the faint drift of Gucci Guilty Elixir.

Her stomach lurched. She fisted the sheets until her knuckles went white, cold sweat sliding down the back of her neck.

She forced herself to turn over — a bare back, broad shoulders, the line of a spine held taut even in sleep, a few faint red scratch marks she recognized as her own.

Her breath caught. Her stomach flipped completely. She didn't want to spend one more second in that room. She grabbed her clothes off the floor, yanked them on in the bathroom, shoes in hand, and bolted.

*****

The second she pushed open the front door of Bailey family estate, she froze.

Her father, Richard Bailey, and her stepmother, Cara, sat on the couch like a tribunal waiting to deliver a verdict.

Her stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"Dad. Cara." The greeting came out thin. Her palms were already sweating.

"Where were you last night?" Richard didn't ask so much as state it, ice in every syllable.

"I— I was at a friend's, we watched movies all night, it got late so I crashed there." The lie shook in her own ears the moment it left her mouth.

Richard let out a cold laugh and threw a stack of photos onto the table in front of her — every angle, a strange man's arm around her, walking her into a hotel lobby. Unmistakable.

Isabella's hands started to shake, color draining from her face. It felt like ice water poured straight down the back of her neck.

Cara rose right on cue, resting a soothing hand on Richard's shoulder. "Darling, don't get so angry. She's young. We can talk this out."

Olivia came down the stairs in heels, voice pitched with just the right amount of innocence. "Oh, Izzy. If you'd told us you had someone, we wouldn't have stopped you."

"Right," Isabella said flatly. "As thoughtful as you were last night?"

Olivia blinked, all wide-eyed confusion. "What did I do?"

"You know exactly what you did."

"I really don't." Olivia spread her hands, something sharp and testing glinting behind the innocent act. "Why don't you remind me? Walk me through last night."

"The drink you handed me."

"What about it? You looked like you were having fun."

"You drugged it, Olivia."

Olivia clutched her chest like she'd been struck. "Oh my God. Isabella, how can you accuse me of something like that? I threw you a birthday party because I wanted to make you happy."

She turned to their father, voice folding soft and wounded. "Dad, maybe I shouldn't have thrown her anything at all..."

"Wow. Oscar-worthy." Isabella's jaw clenched.

"Enough!" Richard shot up, finger jabbing toward her. "Every single time you screw up, the first thing you do is throw your sister under the bus!"

Sister. The word landed like a slap.

Isabella's mother hadn't even been gone a year before her father moved Cara and Olivia in — a stranger her own age, suddenly her "sister," suddenly expected at every dinner, every holiday, as if nothing had happened.

She hadn't even had time to grieve before she was told to treat a stranger like family.

She hadn't known, back then, how long that "sister" had been quietly plotting under this roof.

"Dad," Isabella said quietly, "Mom hasn't even been gone for a year. You moved them into this house, and I never complained."

Her eyes burned.

"But now you're asking me to pretend none of this happened?"

"What does your mother have to do with this?" Richard's face went red. "Are you trying to change the subject to dodge what you did?"

"I didn't do anything!" Isabella's eyes finally burned, a full night of pent-up humiliation cracking her voice down the middle. "She drugged me. She's the one who put me in that room!"

"Enough." Richard's shout rattled the chandelier. "I was going to hand you the company once you came of age. Now I see exactly what you are. You don't deserve it."

He turned away, refusing to even look at her, his voice gone flat and cold as a blade. "I don't want to see your face. Get out."

Isabella stood frozen, forgetting to breathe. "Dad. Are you serious right now?"

No answer.

Cara turned to the housekeeper standing off to the side, her voice suddenly maternal, like she was smoothing over some minor spat. "June, put Isabella's suitcase back in her room. I'm sure they'll make up tomorrow."

The suitcase. Already packed. Waiting for this exact moment. That realization drove into her chest like a needle.

Richard kicked the case across the floor, and it landed at her feet with a dull, heavy thud.

Isabella stared at it for a long moment, throat locked tight, and then the tears came without warning.

She wiped her face once, said nothing else, picked up the case, and walked out with her spine dead straight, nails dug into the handle, never once looking back — because she knew if she did, she'd fall apart on the spot.

"Dad, let me go talk some sense into her," Olivia called after her, and the moment the door shut behind them, her whole expression flipped.

"So? How'd it feel, giving your first time to some fat, disgusting old man?" she murmured, leaning close to Isabella's ear, savoring every syllable.

Isabella's feet locked in place. The words twisted like a fist inside her chest — and for half a second, the memory of that lean, young back flashed behind her eyes. That's not — that's not what happened. But her mind was too scrambled to fight back.

"Say whatever you're going to say."

"What I'm going to say," Olivia said, holding up her phone, a video thumbnail glowing on the screen, "is that if you want me to keep this buried, you'd better not come crawling back for a piece of the family fortune."

Isabella stared at that phone until her jaw ached from clenching it. She didn't argue. She simply filed the moment away in her mind. One day, she'd take back everything that was hers—with interest.

Olivia watched her walk away, a satisfied little smile curling at the corner of her mouth. The company was hers now. Soon, the house—and everything else—would be hers too.

Just then, a line of black cars pulled up outside, silent as a held breath — leading them, a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

The door opened. A man stepped out, unhurried, and the air itself seemed to press down around him.

"Hello. Ethan Reeds."

Olivia's breath caught, gooseflesh sweeping down her arms.

Ethan Reeds — the reclusive titan who never showed his face in public, the one rumored to have no interest in women whatsoever. What was he doing here?

"Last night. That room at the hotel." His eyes settled on her, his tone giving away nothing. "That was you?"

Olivia's stomach dropped, blood roaring up into her skull. That room had been meant for Isabella. She'd arranged it herself.

Which meant — the man who'd actually spent last night with her sister hadn't been the one she'd set up at all. It had been him.

That little tramp. Unbelievable luck.

But the opportunity was standing right in front of her. No sense letting it go to waste.

She lowered her lashes, folding herself into something soft and shy, fingers twisting the hem of her dress.

"That was me."

Ethan said nothing.

His expression remained unreadable.

And with that lie, the game began.