I stared at the shredded fabric on the ground and almost laughed.

Five years. For five years, I'd skipped buying skincare products just so I could afford his art supplies. My hands were covered in calluses and tiny scars from years of authentication work.

And he'd been living a life of luxury I couldn't even imagine.

Amy walked up to me, looking down her nose like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

"Did you hear him? Dirk told you to get lost."

"That dress was eighteen thousand dollars. It's coming out of your paycheck."

I lifted my head and locked my eyes on Dirk's retreating back.

"Dirk, you don't think you owe me an explanation?"

He stopped.

He turned around, his eyes full of mockery.

"Explain what?"

"Explain why I never told you I'm the sole heir to Harding Group?"

"Or explain that these past five years were just a little role-playing game called 'the struggling couple'?"

He walked up to me, pulled a stack of cash from his pocket, and flung it in my face.

Bills scattered across the floor.

"Isabella, five years is long enough. Time to call it quits."

"That's enough to buy you, what, a dozen knockoff handbags?"

"Take the money and disappear."

I didn't pick up a single bill.

I just looked at him, my heart splitting open like someone had taken a blade to it.

"Dirk, when you were in the hospital, I sold the only piece of jewelry my mother ever left me."

"You told me the thing you hated most in this world was rich people. You said they had no souls."

"So I worked myself to the bone, terrified you might ever feel like you were going without."

Dirk looked at me like I'd just told the funniest joke he'd ever heard. He pulled Amy against him by the waist, his whole body shaking with laughter.

"Isabella, you really are painfully naive."

"That hospital stay? I was dodging an arranged marriage my family set up. Checked in for a few quiet days, that's all."

"Those few thousand dollars you scraped together didn't even cover my private nurse."

Amy nestled into his chest, giggling so hard she could barely stand.

"Dirk, your old taste was really something."

"A woman who reeks of bargain bins, and you put up with her for five years?"

Dirk kissed Amy's forehead.

"Exactly. That's why I appreciate you so much more now."

He waved his hand, and several bodyguards closed in immediately.

"Throw her out."

"And make sure everyone in the industry knows: anyone who hires her is making an enemy of me."

I was shoved out of the mansion.

Outside, rain was coming down in sheets.

I walked through the downpour, unable to tell whether it was water or tears running down my face.

I made it back to our basement apartment. Less than three hundred square feet.

His sketches still hung on the walls.

He'd told me I was his muse.

He'd told me that once he made it big, he'd buy me the biggest diamond ring money could buy.

I tore every single painting off the wall like a woman possessed. Paper flew through the air in ragged pieces, and through the chaos, I spotted an elegant gift box tucked inside a drawer.

I'd saved for six months to buy it. A birthday present for him.

A top-of-the-line handcrafted brush.

Now it was clear that to someone like him, it probably wasn't even worth polishing his shoes with.

My phone rang.

It was Professor Whitfield.

"Isabella, what happened? Harding Group just put out an industry blacklist."

"Who on earth did you cross?"

Before I could get a word out, heavy footsteps thundered outside the door.

Several men kicked it open.

It was Amy.

She stood there in designer rain boots, tracking mud across my spotless floor.

"Isabella, Dirk said you left some things at his place."

She flicked her wrist, and a bodyguard tossed a black garbage bag onto the floor.

Inside were every piece of clothing I'd bought him over the past five years.

Every last one, cut to ribbons.

"Dirk says all this junk is an eyesore. He wants you to get rid of it yourself."

Amy circled the apartment, her gaze sweeping over everything before finally coming to rest at my workstation.

That was where I kept my most prized authentication tools.

"So this is what you depend on to survive?"

She picked up a custom-made magnifying loupe and tossed it on the floor.

Crack. The lens shattered.

I'd scrimped and saved for an entire year to afford that.

"Amy, don't you dare!"

I lunged forward to grab the rest of my tools.

The bodyguards seized me, pinning my arms behind my back.

Amy walked up to me and slapped me across the face. Hard.

"Don't I dare?"

"A piece of trash like you thinks she can have designs on my man?"

"Dirk told me himself. He said the thing he hates most about you is those eyes. The way you look at everyone like you're checking them for flaws."

Her gaze dropped to my right hand. Something cold and vicious crept into her expression.

"I hear these hands of yours are quite valuable."

"That they can tell real from fake. That they can feel the grain of a brushstroke."

She jerked her chin at the bodyguards, and they dragged me toward the stairwell.

The building was old, Soviet-style. The stairs were steep and made of solid concrete.

"Isabella Fox. Without these hands, what kind of 'Divine Eye' are you?"

I fought with everything I had, screaming for help.

But every door on the floor had already slammed shut. The neighbors had seen the bodyguards and wanted no part of it.

One of the bodyguards shoved me.

My body pitched forward and tumbled down the staircase.

My right hand struck the concrete edge of a step with the full force of the fall.

White-hot agony tore through me.

I heard the bone snap.

When I woke up in the hospital, my right hand was wrapped in layers of bandages.

The doctor shook his head.

"Comminuted fracture. Severe nerve damage."

"You'll struggle to hold anything heavy from now on, let alone perform precision authentication work."

My mind went blank.

For an authenticator, your hands are your life.

No sense of touch. No fine motor control.

I was finished.

Dirk Harding, you're ruthless.

You didn't just steal my heart. You had to destroy my livelihood too.

The door swung open.

Dirk walked in.

He looked as polished as ever, carrying a fruit basket in one hand.

"Isabella, Amy's young. She doesn't always know where to draw the line."

He sat down. His voice carried a thin veneer of warmth, the kind you'd offer a stray you pitied.

"There's fifty thousand dollars on this card. Enough to last you the rest of your life."

"All you have to do is sign this settlement agreement and drop any claims against Amy."

I stared at the card.

Then I laughed.

Tears slid down my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth. The taste was shockingly bitter.

"Fifty thousand?"

"Dirk, you think my hand is worth fifty thousand dollars?"

"Or do you think five years of your lies are worth fifty thousand dollars?"

His brow creased. Whatever thin patience he'd brought with him evaporated.

"Don't push your luck."

"You should know by now that in Greystone City, I have a hundred ways to make you disappear."

"Sign it. It's better for everyone."

I took the settlement agreement.

My right hand throbbed so badly I could barely grip the pen.

I switched to my left hand and scrawled my name in jagged, uneven letters.

Satisfaction settled across Dirk's face.

"There we go. Smart people know when to accept reality."

He picked up the signed agreement and walked out without a backward glance.

What he didn't know was this:

Beneath that settlement agreement, my phone had been hidden the entire time.

Every word he'd just said, his own admission that Amy had ordered the assault, had been recorded. Crystal clear.

I knew the recording alone wasn't enough to take down the Harding family.

But I could wait.

After I was discharged, I vanished.

I locked myself inside a run-down basement apartment.

My right hand was useless, so I trained my left.

My sense of touch was gone, so I sharpened my eyes.

I threw myself into researching Harding Group's luxury retail operations.

Dirk had been preparing an unprecedented "Global Limited Edition Auction" to prove his worth to his family.

It was his ticket to the throne.

It was also the funeral I'd handpicked for him.

I reached out to Mentor Hargrove, the man who'd brought me into the industry.

When the old man saw my hand, tears streamed down his weathered face.

"Bella, why put yourself through this?"

"Mentor, I'm not asking for much." I held his gaze. "I just need one invitation to that auction."