In the bottom drawer of my desk, under a stack of old Vance family letters, I kept the only thing that mattered now: clearance papers for the Raven Wharf auction.

Raven Wharf was where old families sold secrets without admitting they were broke. Land deeds, offshore accounts, black ledgers, stolen art, favors written in blood. One vault there held documents my father had hidden before the Vance family fell. If I could get them, I could rebuild without Lucien Moretti's name.

The auction opened in seven days.

Seven days, and I would be out.

Someone knocked.

"Grace," Lucien said through the door. "We need to talk."

I slid the papers beneath a scarf. "Come in."

He entered without waiting, his eyes moving over the half-open suitcase. "Going somewhere?"

"Sorting things."

"You were strange today."

"Was I?"

"You gave Isabella the ruby. You gave her your dress. You are either furious or trying very hard to look like you aren't."

I folded a blouse and placed it in the suitcase. "Isn't this what you wanted? A woman who doesn't argue with you about Isabella?"

For once, he had no clean answer.

After a moment, he said, "I came to ask you for something."

Of course he did.

"What?"

"The Vance signet."

My fingers stopped. The signet ring was the last real heirloom my family owned. It opened our old vaults, verified our accounts, and proved that the Vance name still had weight in certain rooms.

"Why?"

Lucien's jaw flexed. "Isabella's name is still tied to the convoy shooting. I need leverage with a judge who owes your family. The signet will get him to listen."

In my last life, I would have handed it over just to hear him call me generous. I would have told myself love meant helping him protect the woman he kept choosing over me.

This life, I looked him in the eye. "You can have it."

Suspicion flickered across his face. "Just like that?"

"No. I want a signed release removing every Vance holding from Moretti custody, and a sponsor letter for Raven Wharf under my own name. No Moretti escort. No Moretti oversight."

His stare went cold. "That is a lot of paperwork for one ring."

"Then don't pay it."

Something changed in his expression. The anger faded, replaced by a slow, almost arrogant smile. "So that is what this is. You want to prove you can walk away. You want me to stop you."

"Call it whatever helps you sleep."

He stepped closer. "You still care. If you didn't, you wouldn't be making such a show of independence."

I let him believe it. A man like Lucien trusted his own ego more than the truth, and right now, his ego was useful.

"Do we have a deal?" I asked.

"We do." He looked too pleased with himself. "You can have your little release. And you will come with me to the Ravencrest gala tomorrow night. The families expect to see my future wife."

Before I could answer, the door opened.

Isabella stood there in the Paris dress. The ivory silk hugged her perfectly, and the Moretti ruby burned at her throat.

"Lucien," she said, turning once with a shy smile. "How do I look?"

His eyes softened before he could stop them. "Beautiful."

Isabella glanced at me as if she had won something. "I heard you mention the gala. Grace, you're going? I just don't want people to think I pushed you out."

The trap was obvious. If I refused, I was bitter. If I went, I watched them perform.

I closed my suitcase. "I'll be there."

The Ravencrest gala was built for people who smiled with knives behind their backs.

Every major family in New York was there: Moretti, DeLuca, Santoro, Hale. Women glittered in diamonds. Men traded threats over champagne. By midnight, three alliances had been hinted at, two insults had been swallowed, and at least one man had probably ordered another man's death in the bathroom.

I stood near the windows in a navy silk dress and watched Lucien move through the room with Isabella on his arm.

She wore silver. He kept a hand at her waist. Every few minutes, she leaned in to whisper something, and he bent his head as if the rest of the world could wait.

"Poor Grace Vance," a woman behind me murmured. "Not even married yet, and already replaced."

"Moretti men like useful wives and fragile mistresses," another said. "She should learn the difference."

I sipped my champagne and said nothing.

A man from one of the smaller families drifted toward me with a smile too sharp to be friendly. "Miss Vance. Brave of you to come alone."

"I'm not alone. I'm bored. There's a difference."

His smile thinned. "Must be hard, watching your fiance play house with another woman."

Before I could answer, Lucien appeared beside me.

"Careful," he said softly. "The last man who spoke about my fiancee like that lost more than his invitation."

The man went pale and backed away.

I looked at Lucien. There it was again, the part of him that wanted me under his name even when he was giving everything else to Isabella. In my last life, that possessiveness had confused me. I had mistaken it for love.

Now it only felt like ownership.

"You don't have to perform," I said. "No one is watching anymore."

"I am always watching you." Then Lucien lowered his voice. "There is one more thing. Isabella is staying in the bridal suite at Verona House. Her nightmares are worse in unfamiliar rooms. I need you to wait before moving in."

I looked across the room at Isabella, who was pretending not to stare.

"Fine."

Lucien blinked. "Fine?"

"She can keep the suite."

Relief crossed his face, but it did not last. My easy surrender unsettled him more than a fight would have.

"Grace, look at me."

Before I could, glass shattered above us.

The first shot hit the chandelier. Crystals rained down as screams tore through the ballroom. The second shot came from the balcony, aimed straight at Isabella.

Lucien moved on instinct.

He shoved her behind him and covered her with his body.

People ran. Tables overturned. Someone slammed into my shoulder, and I stumbled hard against the wall. I heard another shot, felt the punch of it before I understood the sound, then saw red spreading across my dress.

I had been hit.

Pain ripped through me so cleanly that my knees gave out. I pressed a hand to my side and looked through the chaos.

Lucien was on the floor with Isabella in his arms.

"I've got you," he kept saying. "Bella, look at me. You're safe."

He did not see me.

Not until a DeLuca guard shouted, "Miss Vance is down!"

Lucien's head snapped up.

For one second, our eyes met across the ruined ballroom.

Then the floor tilted, and everything went black.

I woke three days later in my own bed, with stitches in my side and a fever burning under my skin.

Mira, my maid, nearly dropped the glass in her hand. "Miss Grace. Thank God. I'll get Mr. Moretti."

"Don't." My voice came out rough. "Where is he?"

Mira's face gave me the answer before she spoke. "With Miss Isabella. She wasn't injured, but she has been... distressed. The doctor said she needs quiet and familiar company."

I closed my eyes. Of course.

The door opened that evening. Lucien stepped in, still in the same black shirt, his face drawn in a way I might have pitied once.

"Grace," he said. "I should have protected you."

I looked at him from the bed. "How is Isabella?"

He flinched. "She is shaken. She keeps waking up screaming. I came as soon as I could."

"Then go back."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Act like you don't care."

I almost smiled. He could ignore my pain, but not my indifference. That was the part he could not stand.

"I'm tired, Lucien."

He took a step closer. "I will make this up to you. Anything you want."

I had wanted him once. That was the only thing he could never give me.

"I want to sleep."

He stood there for a long moment, waiting for me to break first. When I did not, his phone rang. Isabella's name lit the screen.

I turned my face toward the window. "Go."

He left.

The moment his footsteps faded, I sat up and pulled the IV from my arm.

Mira gasped. "Miss Grace, you can't move."

"Pack the small case. Only the black clothes, my passport, and the papers in the blue folder."

"Are you leaving?"

"Yes."

She stared at me, frightened and relieved at the same time. Then she nodded and moved fast.

I had already traded the Vance signet for something better than Lucien's money: a signed Moretti release cutting the Vance estate free from his family's custody, plus a sponsor letter for Raven Wharf under my own name. His lawyers thought it was a jealous little stunt, a bride trying to prove she still mattered. By morning, those papers would be filed beyond Moretti reach. The Raven Wharf clearance sat against my ribs beneath my bandage, warm from my skin.

Before dawn, I went to Lucien's study.

The room looked exactly as it always had: dark wood, leather chairs, his father's portrait on the wall. I placed the gifts I had once given him on his desk. Cufflinks engraved with our initials. A watch I had saved six months to buy. A stack of letters he had kept but never answered.

Then I laid the amended marriage contract on top.

Beside Isabella's name, I wrote one line: You got what you wanted.

I walked out through the servants' corridor, past the kitchens, past the sleeping guards, and into the gray edge of morning.

A black town car waited by the side gate. Mira opened the door for me with shaking hands. "Where will you go?"

I looked back at Verona House one last time. "Somewhere he can't follow."

By the time Lucien returned to his study, the sun was coming up.

He found the cufflinks first. Then the letters. Then the contract.

For a long moment, he did not move.

At the bottom of the page, where his wife's name should have been, Isabella Vale stared back at him in clean black ink.

His voice, when it finally came, was low and dangerous.

"Where is Grace?"

The guard at the door went pale. "Sir... every record tied to Miss Vance has been wiped. Her phone is dead, the gate cameras are blank, and the plates on the car do not exist. We have no location."