Chapter 1 | The Night I Burned Down My Family Name (2)

"Owes." Luna laughed, and the laugh went cold in her chest. "I learned piano at five, French at ten, and at fourteen they started dragging me to 'socials' so I'd learn to be expensive. You didn't give me a childhood. You gave me inventory management."

She lifted her voice just enough to carry across the room. "While we're all being honest — if any of you in here have daughters, remember tonight. Your 'love' and my family's 'love' are the same ledger. Some of you just keep yours in a column you call a conscience."

That landed. A murmur rolled through the crowd like wind through grass.

William's face had gone the color of a thunderhead. In his whole life, she doubted anyone had ever talked to him like this — least of all a daughter he'd financed for twenty-one years.

Then a soft voice cut in. "Sister."

Mia Sterling moved through the crowd like a spring rain, pale pink dress, eyes already glistening. She took Luna's hand with both of hers, warm and trembling. "Please, don't do this. Dad and Mom love you. Senator Vance respects you. We're family — can't we just talk this through?"

She even threw the room a watery, brave smile, as if apologizing on Luna's behalf to sixty-seven strangers. The same smile, Luna thought, that had won Mia "Most Beloved Daughter of the Season" three years running.

Luna looked down at the hand clutching hers.

Mia Sterling. Adopted at eight, raised as the perfect daughter. Gentle. Considerate. Forever bringing tea to her parents, forever the first to smooth things over when her "difficult" sister acted out. The gossip columns said if the Sterlings had one angel for a daughter, it was Mia.

Luna peeled her fingers off one by one.

"Mia. Before you talk me into anything," she said, "give me back the proposal you lifted off my desk last month. The three-month brand strategy I built from nothing. The one you rebranded as your 'original work.'"

Mia's face went white for half a second, then slid back into startled fawn. "Sister, what are you talking about? I didn't take anything — you've been under so much stress, why don't you sit down—"

"I don't know about stress." Luna fished a photograph from her clutch and held it level with Mia's eyes. "But I do know the folder in your third drawer, the one stamped 'M. Sterling — Original.' Want to guess whether I took a picture of it?"

The tear on Mia's lashes hung there, neither falling nor drying. The photo showed the corner of the folder clear as day, the signature in her own looping hand.

"I — I was keeping it safe for you," Mia whispered, eyes darting.

"Safe enough to sign your name on it." Luna tucked the photo back and patted her sister's shoulder, neither hard nor soft. "Nice performance, little sister. Too bad I've been rehearsing opposite the white-lotus type for twenty-one years. I'm your understudy's worst nightmare."

The room went dead. A champagne flute clinked again, loud as a gunshot.