Chloe lifted her head. Met his gaze directly. The last of her tears had dried. Left behind stark, clear resolve.

"What do you want?" she asked, voice steady. She knew there was no such thing as a free lunch in his world.

A flicker of something—approval, maybe—crossed his face. He appreciated that she'd shed her naive illusions.

He rose to his full height. Resumed his position of dominance.

"I need a sword," he said, voice cold and precise. "And you have the potential to become one."

"What does that mean? What do you want me to do?"

He didn't answer directly. Instead, he posed a question that cut to the core of her being.

"What are you willing to pay for revenge? Your body? Your name? Everything you are?"

The faces of Gisele and Drake swam in her vision. Their triumphant smiles mocking her. The memory was fuel.

"I'll pay anything." No hesitation.

A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched the corner of Ashton's mouth. The answer he wanted.

He turned. An assistant who'd been waiting silently by the door stepped forward with a file. Ashton took it and tossed it onto the bed in front of her.

"Then sign it."

A contract. Thick. Bound in leather. The terms were draconian. She, Chloe Hutchinson, would place herself under the complete and total authority of Ashton Noble. In return, he would provide the means and opportunity for her revenge.

She flipped through the pages. Her eyes scanned the dense legal text.

Then one clause made her blood run cold. Her pupils contracted.

She was required to consent to complete facial reconstruction surgery.

"You want me to change my face?" Voice strangled.

"Chloe Hutchinson is dead," Ashton stated flatly. "A dead woman can't get revenge. You need a new identity. One so powerful they'll be forced to look up to you."

He slid a photograph from the file. A woman. Breathtakingly beautiful. Sharp, aristocratic features. Eyes that held an innate arrogance and confidence.

"Her name is Eve Contreras," Ashton said, tone casual as he dropped the bombshell. "My fiancée."

Chloe stared at him. Stunned into silence. She was to become a replacement for his missing fiancée.

"She's been missing," he added, a hint of steel in his voice. "Until I find her, you will be her."

The sheer audacity of the plan was staggering. Her mind went blank.

Ashton watched her. Letting the weight of it sink in.

"You can refuse," he said, offering a final out. "I'll send you somewhere no one knows you. I'll give you enough money to live out your life in obscurity. But you will never have your revenge."

His words were a blade twisting in the wound of her betrayal. A quiet life haunted by the ghosts of what they did to her? Or a dangerous, terrifying path that led to justice?

An image of her adoptive parents flashed in her mind. They had taught her to be good. To be kind.

Her kindness had been rewarded with a push from a cliff.

She reached for the pen. The last flicker of hesitation in her eyes died. Replaced by a cold, hard flame.

She signed her name at the bottom of the contract: Chloe Hutchinson.

It was the last time she would ever write it.

The moment the pen lifted from the paper, she felt it. A profound finality. The girl she used to be was gone. Buried under the ink of her own signature.

Ashton took the contract. A look of satisfaction on his face.

He extended a hand to her. An invitation. "Welcome to the game, Eve."

She ignored his hand. Stood up on her own. A small act of defiance that signaled a shift in her spirit.

"What's next?" Her voice cool. Detached.

A glint of admiration appeared in Ashton's eyes. "Good. First, we cut your hair."

He snapped his fingers. A stylist who'd been waiting outside entered, pushing a cart of professional tools.

Chloe looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her long, dark hair—the hair Drake had always claimed to love—cascaded over her shoulders. She felt no attachment. No sense of loss.

She met the stylist's eyes in the mirror. "Cut it."

The sharp snip of the scissors was the first sound of her new life. Strands of her past fell to the floor. And a stranger with sharp, determined eyes began to emerge.