I had left the Veyra swimwear launch two hours early with silver glitter still dusted over my collarbones and a bottle of Blake's favorite bourbon tucked under my arm. At twenty-four, I was finally getting booked for campaigns people recognized. Blake had won second place at the Pacific Crown race that afternoon, and I wanted to surprise him at the team party.

Tessa Reed, my best friend and Falcon Motorsport's operations manager, had introduced us eight months earlier. She had said a famous driver and an upcoming model would make a dangerous couple.

She had been right about the danger. Just not the reason.

The private room door at Halcyon Bar stood open by an inch. Blake's voice reached me before my hand touched the brass handle.

“Sienna in that black campaign?” one of his teammates said. “I'd blow an engine for one hour with her.”

Laughter rolled through the room.

Heat climbed my throat. I waited for Blake to shut him down.

Instead, he laughed too. “One hour? You'd need electrolytes. She never gets enough.”

Someone whistled. “Mercer, you lucky bastard.”

“Lucky?” Blake said. “Try getting sleep before qualifying when she's climbing on you at three in the morning. The body is incredible. The maintenance is brutal.”

The bourbon bottle became slippery in my hand.

Our sex life had been intense, playful, private—or so I had believed. I had trusted him with every needy sound and reckless confession. Now he was turning those moments into locker-room comedy.

Another voice cut in. “Send her to Adrian Vale before the final. One night with those legs around him and maybe the machine finally forgets how to win.”

A chair scraped. “Nothing makes Vale forget how to win.”

“Then make it a weekend.”

Blake chuckled. “If she helps me take the championship, I'll gift-wrap her myself.”

The room erupted.

Something inside me went perfectly still.

I stepped backward—and hit a solid chest.

A hand closed around my upper arm before my heel twisted. Warm. Firm. Controlled.

I turned and found Adrian Vale standing behind me.

Every racing fan knew that face: dark hair, gray eyes. He drove for Voss Racing with a precision commentators called inhuman. Three championships in five years. Twenty-nine years old. Untouchable on track, nearly invisible off it.

Tonight he wore a black button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. His gaze moved from the unopened door to my face, then to the bottle trembling in my grip.

He had heard.

Humiliation burned hotter than anger. I yanked my arm free.

“Don't,” I whispered.

His jaw tightened. “Sienna—”

I did not remember ever telling him my name.

I shoved the bourbon at him. He caught it against his chest.

“Give that to the boys,” I said. “Apparently they've earned it.”

Then I ran.

I ignored three calls from Tessa, six from Blake, and the sensible voice telling me to go home. Instead, I crossed downtown and walked into a basement bar where nobody watched racing and the lighting was too red for anyone to recognize me from a billboard.

I ordered tequila.

Then another.

By the fourth, Blake's laughter no longer rang in my ears. By the fifth, I could almost pretend I had not spent months rearranging castings around his race schedule, icing his injured shoulder, and flying economy overnight because he claimed he could not sleep before a race without me.

“You alone?”

A man dropped onto the stool beside me. Midforties, wedding ring, sour breath.

“No.”

I turned away.

He leaned closer. “You look alone.”

His fingers slid onto my bare knee.

I knocked his hand off. “Touch me again and lose it.”

He laughed and caught my wrist.

A second hand closed around his.

The man's face changed.

Adrian stood behind him.

He did not raise his voice. “Let go.”

“Mind your business.”

“She is my business.”

Adrian twisted just enough. The man hissed and released me. A bouncer appeared, took one look at Adrian's expression, and dragged the protester toward the stairs.

I stared at the champion. “Did you follow me?”

“Yes.”

“That is creepy.”

“Probably.” He took the shot from my hand before I could drink it. “You were crying so hard you walked into traffic.”

“I looked both ways.”

“You looked at neither.”

The hard line of his mouth should have annoyed me. I noticed the pulse beating in his throat and the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders.

Blake's friends had joked that I could ruin Adrian Vale.

A savage, drunken idea took root.

I slid off my stool and stepped between his knees. “They think you're impossible to distract.”

His eyes sharpened. “You are drunk.”

“They think I could do it.” I put both hands on his chest. Muscle tightened beneath my palms. “Want to prove them right?”

“Sienna.”

I kissed him.

For one electric second, he did nothing. Then his hand landed at my waist, spanning it almost completely, and his mouth opened under mine.

The contact detonated through me. He tasted like mint and restraint. I pressed closer, needing Blake's words erased, needing to be wanted by the one man Blake envied.

Adrian's breath broke. His body reacted against mine, unmistakably hard, and triumph flashed through my hurt.

Then he gripped my shoulders and set me back.

“No.” His voice was rough.

“You're attracted to me. Take me home.”

“I am taking you home, not for sex.”

I tried to kiss him again. He turned his face, and my mouth brushed the scar at his brow instead.

That tiny act of refusal hurt more than it should have.

“Am I only good enough when men are crazy about me?”

His gaze snapped to mine. “Never say that again.”

He paid my tab, wrapped his jacket around me, and guided me outside with one hand at the small of my back. Every time I stumbled, his fingers tightened. He put me in a dark sports car and fastened my seat belt when I failed twice.

“Address?” he asked.

“My apartment is being painted.”

“Then you're coming with me.”

The city blurred past. I watched his hands move over the wheel—steady hands, scarred knuckles, no wasted motion. At a red light, I touched one.

He went still.

“Do you ever lose control?” I asked.

“Not with someone who can't clearly choose it.”

The answer should have ended the game. Instead, it made desire curl low in me.

His townhouse was all stone, glass, and midnight quiet. He gave me water, found me a clean shirt, and turned his back while I changed. The fabric smelled like cedar and him.

When he came close to take the empty glass, I caught his collar.

“Make him sorry.”

“Sienna, you will be sorry tomorrow.”

“I already am.”

I pulled.

Buttons flew across the floor. His shirt opened, revealing a hard chest and a pale line of an old racing injury beneath his ribs. I pressed my palm over it. His muscles jumped. His hands closed around my waist, and for one breath he held me so tightly my feet nearly left the ground.

His forehead dropped to mine.

“You have no idea what you're asking me to survive,” he murmured.

I smiled, or tried to.

Then the room tilted.

Adrian swore and caught me before I hit the floor.

The last thing I felt was his arm beneath my knees and his mouth near my temple.

“You don't get to use yourself as a weapon,” he said. “Not even against him.”

I woke in a bed large enough to host a board meeting, wearing Adrian Vale's T-shirt and one sock.

For several terrible seconds, I did not remember why.

Then I saw the torn black shirt folded over a chair.

Memory arrived like a crash: Blake laughing, my mouth on Adrian's, buttons striking hardwood, Adrian's body hard against mine.

“Oh God.”

A glass of water and two painkillers sat on the nightstand beside a handwritten note.

Door was locked from your side. Coffee downstairs. I did not commit the crime. —A

Relief weakened my bones. Shame finished the job.

I dressed in last night's silver mini dress, carried my shoes, and escaped before eight. In the entryway, my phone showed a new contact.

ADRIAN VALE—Emergency, bad decisions, torn shirts.

Under it waited one message.

You left before coffee. Drink water. And end it with him before you let revenge choose your next mistake.

I should have deleted the number.

I stared at it all the way home.

Blake arrived at noon, using the code I had not yet changed. He filled my small kitchen in a Falcon team hoodie, sunglasses hiding the results of his own party.

“Where the hell were you?”

“Listening at the door.”

He stopped.

I watched the exact second he understood.

“Sienna, it was guys talking trash.”

“You offered me to Adrian Vale.”

“It was a joke.”

“You told them private things about us.”

“They already think you're hot. What was I supposed to say?”

“That I'm a person.”

He snorted and tossed his keys onto my counter. “Don't get dramatic. You love attention.”

The cruelty was so casual that my remaining love for him curdled.

“We're done.”

His smile disappeared. “No, we're not.”

“Yes.”

“Because I made one stupid joke?”

“Because you enjoyed humiliating me.”

He stepped close, using the height and confidence that once made me feel protected. “You won't last a week without me. Half your invitations come from being my girlfriend.”

“Then I guess I'll learn who was inviting me.”

His eyes dropped to the oversized shirt I had thrown on over my dress. Adrian's shirt.

Blake caught the hem. “Whose is this?”

I slapped his hand away.

His face darkened. “Did you go to him?”

The fact that jealousy reached him when my pain had not made me laugh.

“Get out.”

“Sienna.”

“Now.”

He kicked the leg of a chair on his way out. Ten minutes later, Tessa called.

“What happened?” she demanded. “Blake is furious.”

I told her about the private room, though I left Adrian out of it. Her silence felt too long.

“Men say stupid things after races,” she finally said.

“He offered me to another man.”

“He didn't mean it.”

“He said it.”

She sighed. “Just don't burn everything down while you're emotional.”

I should have heard the warning hidden inside her concern.

Three days later, Blake posted a photograph from a sponsor yacht. His arm circled Chloe Lane, the model brands used whenever they wanted words like fresh, innocent, and girl next door. She wore a white sundress. He wore the watch I had given him for his birthday.

The caption read: Better energy. Better focus.

Celebrity accounts did the rest.

BLAKE MERCER MOVES ON FROM “BOMBSHELL” SIENNA HART.

Fans placed Chloe's skincare ad beside my black-lace campaign. They called her wife material and me a pit-lane mattress. They wrote that Blake must have become exhausted servicing a woman built like me. One account clipped an old runway turn, slowed the movement of my hips, and added a price tag.

Blake liked the post.

That small red heart hurt worse than the headline.

My agency told me not to respond. Tessa sent a sad-face emoji and nothing else.

The next morning, I arrived at a casting for an athletic-wear campaign and found my name crossed off the call sheet. The creative director met me in the corridor rather than let me enter the studio.

“The client is concerned about the comments,” she said.

“The comments about my body? That body is why they called me.”

“It's the narrative around it.”

A narrative. As if strangers had written a new woman over my skin and everyone else had agreed to hire her instead.

In the elevator, two junior models recognized me. One whispered, not quietly enough, “That's Blake Mercer's crazy ex.”

I turned around. Both stared at the floor.

“You can dislike my work,” I said. “You can even dislike me. But don't let a man you've never met teach you how to speak about a woman you have.”

Neither answered. My hands shook after the doors closed, but I was glad I had said it.

Outside, a photographer waited beside the curb. He called my name, then shouted, “Sienna, did Blake leave because you are too thirsty?”

I walked past him without looking down. By the time I reached my apartment, the photograph online made my silence look guilty.

On Friday, Tessa insisted we go out.

“You need music, alcohol, and a man with shoulders,” she said, looping her arm through mine outside Club Apex. “Preferably one who can't spell your name afterward.”

I almost refused, but staying home meant reading comments until dawn. I wore a red dress with a square neckline and enough confidence stitched into it to fake survival.

Blake was inside.

Of course he was.

He stood in the VIP section with Chloe tucked beneath his arm, surrounded by Falcon drivers and sponsors. When he saw me, smug certainty spread over his face.

He came down the steps as if answering a summons.

“Knew you'd show up,” he said.

“This is a public club.”

“You could have picked any public club.” His gaze traveled down my body. “Miss me already?”

Chloe joined him, placing a possessive hand on his chest. Up close, she looked less innocent and more uncomfortable.

“Blake,” she warned.

He kissed her temple without taking his eyes off me. “Relax, baby. Sienna has trouble letting go.”

Disgust replaced the last of my grief.

Tessa stepped forward. “She came with me, you arrogant ass.”

Blake's mouth tightened. “Stay out of it.”

“Gladly, when you stop performing.”

I appreciated her defense enough to miss how quickly she looked away when Blake glared at her.

He drew Chloe into a long kiss meant for an audience.

I felt nothing except embarrassment that I had ever mistaken him for extraordinary.

Then my phone buzzed in my clutch.

A message from Adrian.

A: Your ex just spent six minutes checking the entrance. I assume he expected you.

I scanned the upper level and found Adrian alone at the rail. No entourage. Dark suit. Gray eyes fixed on me.

My pulse changed rhythm.

S: Are you tracking bad decisions again?

A: Only the one in the red dress.

I looked up. His gaze dropped slowly from my face to my heels, then returned with enough heat to tighten every inch of skin between.

This was a terrible idea.

That made it irresistible.

S: You told me to end it before revenge chose my next mistake.

A: I did.

S: I ended it.

His jaw flexed.

S: Have dinner with me tomorrow.

Three dots appeared, vanished, then appeared again.

A: Is this still about him?

I looked at Blake, who was watching me watch Adrian.

I could have lied.

S: Partly.

Adrian's answer came at once.

A: Honesty earns you dinner. Nothing else.

I smiled for the first time all week.

Across the room, Blake saw it—and followed my gaze to the champion he hated losing to.

His arm fell from Chloe's waist.

Dinner with Adrian took place in a restaurant with no sign, six tables, and a chef who greeted him by first name.

He stood when I arrived. His navy suit fit like someone had designed it specifically to make women forget their plans. I had chosen a modest black dress, then hated myself for caring whether he approved.

His eyes proved he did.

“You're sober,” he said.

“Disappointed?”

“Relieved.” He pulled out my chair. His fingers brushed the bare strip of my back, light enough to be accidental and slow enough not to be. “It means every bad decision tonight belongs to us.”

Dinner was nothing like I expected. Adrian did not brag about racing. He asked about my work and listened when I explained that modeling was less glamour than five a.m. call times, bruised feet, and being measured by strangers. When I asked why he had followed me from Blake's party, he turned his water glass once between his fingers.

“You looked like you might disappear if nobody saw you.”

The answer lodged beneath my ribs.

After dessert, he drove me home. At my door, I leaned against the frame and waited.

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

“Nothing else,” he reminded me.

“That was before dinner.”

“Revenge is still sitting between us.”

“She's getting bored.”

His laugh was low and surprised. He stepped close enough that my breasts brushed his jacket when I inhaled.

One hand settled beside my head on the doorframe. The other traced the edge of my jaw, not kissing me, making the absence feel like contact.

“When I kiss you again,” he said, “you won't be looking over my shoulder to see if Blake noticed.”

Then he left me shaking in my hallway.

Four days later, Blake called from an unknown number.

“I found your mother's necklace.”

I sat upright on my sofa. The small sapphire pendant was the only piece of jewelry my mother had left me before cancer took her. I had searched for it after the breakup and assumed it was lost during a campaign trip.

“Where?”

“In my locker bag.”

“Send it with Tessa.”

“She's coordinating practice. Come get it yourself.”

“I'll meet you somewhere public.”

“I'm at Falcon's training center until six. After that, it goes in the mail. Your choice.”

The line died.

I told myself I could walk into Falcon, take the necklace, and leave. I had been there dozens of times. Security knew me. I refused to let Blake hold my mother's memory hostage.

At five thirty, the main garage thundered with pneumatic tools and engines on test cycles. The Falcon complex smelled of hot rubber, metal, and the sharp synthetic oil Blake used to carry home on his skin.

A junior mechanic waved me through. “Mercer said you're expected.”

I found Blake beside his car with Chloe perched on a tool cabinet, scrolling through her phone. She wore white again. Perhaps innocence had a uniform.

Blake held out a velvet pouch.

I opened it. The sapphire caught the overhead lights.

Relief made my eyes sting.

Chloe looked up. “That's what she came for? I thought exes returned things through assistants.”

“So did I,” I said.

Blake leaned against the car. “I wanted to see whether she'd actually come running.”

I closed my fist around the pouch. “You used my dead mother's necklace to test me?”

His smile slipped, but Chloe gave a delicate laugh.

“He said you were intense.”

“And he said you were fresh. We both got reduced to marketing words.”

Her face tightened.

I turned to leave.

“Dinner with Vale?” Blake called after me. “Cute stunt.”

I stopped despite knowing better.

“He uses women for a week and forgets their names,” Blake said. “You think he wants my leftovers?”

My nails bit my palm around the necklace.

“No,” I said. “I think he wants a woman you were too stupid to keep.”

The words hit. I saw it.

I walked away before he could answer.

The usual corridor to reception had been closed for electrical work, so I followed a temporary sign through the development wing. Most bays were dark. At the far end, voices carried through a half-lowered garage door.

“Pressure spike is still outside Crown regulations,” someone said.

“Only if telemetry records it,” another replied.

I slowed.

Through the gap, I recognized Falcon technical director Martin Keene and two engineers bent over a silver cylinder mounted behind a practice chassis. A mechanic connected it to the hybrid control unit.

The dashboard display flashed: SECONDARY BOOST—ACTIVE.

I knew enough racing to understand. The Pacific Crown strictly limited stored-energy deployment. An unregistered bypass could feed extra power on straights, then erase the spike before official data capture.

Martin tapped the screen. “Mercer gets twelve seconds. No more. We trigger through the steering map and purge before inspection.”

My heel scraped concrete.

Three heads turned.

I ran.

Someone shouted. I cut through the parts corridor, slammed my shoulder into a shelf, and heard metal trays crash behind me. My handbag caught on a cart. I ripped it free and kept moving.

The lobby guard looked startled as I burst through the doors.

Outside, I did not stop until I reached my car.

My hands shook too badly to fit the key into the ignition.

I called Tessa.

She answered on the second ring. “Where are you?”

“Falcon. I saw something.”

Her voice changed. “What kind of something?”

I told her. Every detail—the cylinder, Martin, the telemetry purge, Blake's name.

For several seconds, I heard only her breathing.

“You can't tell anyone,” she said.

“They're cheating. I heard them say it.”

“Sienna, listen to me. Drive home. I'll check it quietly.”

“You believe me?”

“Of course. I'm your best friend.”

I closed my eyes, grateful enough to feel weak. “Thank you.”

At seven the next morning, my manager called so many times that the phone vibrated off my nightstand.

I answered half asleep.

“Do not say a word to anyone,” Celeste snapped.

My stomach dropped. “About what?”

She sent me a link.

FALCON MOTORSPORT ACCUSES BLAKE MERCER'S MODEL EX OF ATTEMPTED CORPORATE ESPIONAGE.

The article claimed I had used my former relationship to gain unauthorized access, photograph proprietary systems, and deliver secrets to a rival driver with whom I was “romantically entangled.”

Adrian.

A second call came through. Falcon's general manager.

Then a third. A reporter.

Then dozens more.

My name began trending before I finished reading.

#PitLaneThief.

#SiennaSpy.

Blake gave a statement by eight.

“I cared deeply for Sienna, but her recent behavior has become unstable. I will cooperate fully with investigators.”

Unstable.

The word spread faster than fire.

I called Tessa.

Straight to voicemail.

Again.

Voicemail.

A: Do not leave your apartment. I am coming.

Before I could answer, someone pounded on my door.

“Ms. Hart?” a man's voice called. “Falcon security. We need to ask about stolen property.”

I backed away, clutching my mother's necklace in one hand and my phone in the other.

I had been bait.