Chapter 1

The sound of his footsteps was a metronome counting down to the moment I was supposed to die.

Not literally. Theo Vance wasn’t here to kill me. That would’ve been merciful, and Lily never chose mercy when a slow, public dismantling was available. No, the man approaching my car in the dim fluorescent haze of the parking garage had been sent to seduce me, ruin me, and leave a paper trail of my humiliation for the family to inspect like a bug under glass.

I heard him before I saw him. The deliberate click of leather soles on concrete, the kind of sound that announced a man who believed he was the most dangerous thing in any room. Arrogance, I’d learned, had a specific acoustic signature. It echoed.

I stayed perfectly still in the driver’s seat of my unremarkable sedan, one hand resting on the steering wheel, the other in my lap, fingers curled around my phone. My heartbeat was a steady, practiced drum. Not because I was calm, but because I’d spent eight years learning to make my body a liar. My pulse could be a Jackson Pollock painting on the inside; on the outside, I was still water. They’d taught me that, in their way. The Lund family had been my first education in performance.

The phone buzzed against my palm, a notification from a dating app I’d installed nine days ago. The one where Lily’s hired predator had found me under the name marenreads and sent a message that read, I saw you in the bookstore. You looked like you were solving a crime, not reading a novel.

It had been an excellent opening line. Too excellent. Canned, almost. Like he’d practiced it in a mirror. I’d responded with the right amount of guarded interest, the precise ratio of wit to wariness to make him believe I was cautiously intrigued. I’d made him work for it. Men like Theo needed the chase. If he found me too easy, he’d suspect the trap.

Tonight was our third date. If I let one happen.

The footsteps stopped. I didn’t look up. I kept my eyes on my phone, scrolling through our message history with slow, disinterested swipes. The overhead light in my car was off, turning the windshield into a dark mirror. I could see him reflected there, a silhouette with expensive shoulders and a posture that radiated curated masculinity. He was six feet away, then four, then he was leaning down, his face appearing in my driver’s side window like a ghost I’d already called.

He was handsome. I’d give Lily that. She’d inherited our mother’s eye for aesthetics, if not her intelligence. High cheekbones, a jaw that looked like it could open a bottle, and dark hair cut with the kind of precision that required a standing appointment. His eyes were a warm brown, fringed with lashes that were almost feminine. The perfect face for a weapon. Pretty enough to distract, sharp enough to cut.

I lowered my window.

“You should be more careful,” he said, his voice low, a rumble with a smile folded into it. “A parking garage at night. A woman alone. It’s like you’re auditioning for a cautionary tale.”

I let my lips curve, a small, wry thing. “I’m flattered you think I’m the victim in this movie and not the plot twist.”

He laughed, a quick exhale that fogged the cold air. “There she is. I was starting to think I’d imagined you.”

“I’m not the imaginary type,” I said. “I leave too many receipts.”

He opened the door for me, stepping back with a chivalrous sweep of his hand that belonged in a different century. I stepped out, locking the car behind me. He hadn’t asked me to come with him. He hadn’t said where we were going. The date had been planned for tomorrow night, so this little pop-up was a test, an off-script maneuver. He was checking if I’d protest, if I’d ask questions, if I’d be the kind of woman who demanded a plan.

I didn’t. I just stood there, shoulders relaxed, coat hugged tight, waiting.

He was watching me, his head tilted, one eyebrow raised. “Not going to ask where we’re going?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Most women would.”

“I’m not most women.” I said it flatly, without coquetry. A statement of fact. Let him decode it however he wanted.

Theo smiled again, but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. There it was—the flicker. The briefest crack in the facade, a sliver of confusion. He’d studied me, I was sure. Lily would’ve given him a file. Quiet. Observant. Socially anxious. Desperate for affection. Used to being overlooked. All the notes you’d give a hunter about a broken bird. But he was looking at me now, and I could see the numbers in his head not adding up.

Good.

He pocketed his hands and started walking. I fell into step beside him, my heels clicking against the concrete. They were sensible heels, the kind a young academic might wear to a job interview. My whole wardrobe was a costume, curated for the role of Maren Lund, the forgotten daughter. Soft sweaters, muted colors, hair pulled back in a low bun. I looked like the kind of woman who should be nervous in a dark garage. I’d designed it that way.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said last week,” Theo said, his voice bouncing off the concrete pillars. “About how you don’t read novels for pleasure. You read them to understand what other people think pleasure should feel like.”

“I said that?”

“You did. After your second glass of wine.”

“And you’ve been thinking about it since?”

“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things since.”

We stopped beside a black SUV that probably cost more than my annual salary. The oil-slick shine of it screamed new money with something to prove. Lily had expensive taste in everything, including her men. Theo opened the passenger door for me, and I slipped inside, the leather seat cold against the backs of my thighs.

He got in beside me, and for a moment, neither of us spoke. The engine hummed to life. The heat clicked on. He didn’t reach for the gearshift.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said.

“What did you expect?”

He turned to me, his arm braced on the steering wheel. “Someone who apologized more. Asked permission. You know, the usual.”

“Is that what you’re used to?”

“It’s what I’m usually sent to find.”

A pause. A loaded silence that he filled with another smile, this one self-deprecating. “That came out wrong. I just mean… you’re surprising.”

You have no idea.

I looked at him, truly looked, and let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable. Most people rushed to fill quiet. Theo didn’t. He was trained well. But I could see the tiny flex in his jaw, the way his thumb ran along the stitching of the steering wheel. Beneath the charm, he was already recalibrating. He’d expected a lamb. He’d found something with teeth.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said, my voice soft.

“Anything.”

“Why did you come to the garage tonight, instead of waiting for tomorrow?”

Another micro-flicker. Surprise, then a quick suppression of it. He was making up a lie, I could see the machinery behind his eyes. “Honestly? I drove by and saw your car. And I thought, if I leave without seeing you, I’m going to spend the whole night thinking about it. So I parked.”

“Romantic,” I said, deadpan.

“Or disturbing. Depends on your genre.”

I laughed, a real one, because the line was genuinely good and I could appreciate the craft even in a cheap imitation. “I’ve always preferred the disturbing kind.”

We drove through the city, the lights streaking past in long, wet smears. He made conversation, asked about my work, and I gave him the shape of it without the substance. I was a research assistant at a biomedical institute. I worked long hours. I preferred data to people. All true, all designed to make me seem lonely and unguarded, a woman starved for someone to notice her mind.

But the whole time, I was thinking about the file. The one I’d built on Theodore Vance. It sat in a climate-controlled storage unit across town, inside a locked cabinet, inside a box labeled “Winter Coats.” It contained eight months of bank records, three burner phones, and photographs of him with Lily at a restaurant called Bar Virgo, his hand on her knee, her smile a bright, performative thing. It contained a recording from the restaurant’s private dining room, captured by a wire I’d had planted in a salt shaker. In it, Lily’s voice, high and cold as a wine glass: “Make her love you. Make it hurt. Then leave her where everyone can see.”

I knew every syllable by heart. I’d listened to it until the sound of my sister’s voice stopped making my chest ache.

“You’re quiet,” Theo said, glancing over.

“I’m always quiet.”

“But this is a different quiet. Like you’re calculating something.”

I turned my head against the headrest. “That’s what you think?”

“I think I’m sitting next to a woman who’s already figured out the ending of the book she’s reading.”

“And what ending is that?”

“I don’t know yet.” He smiled, and this time, it reached his eyes. “But I’m starting to think it might be the kind where the heroine surprises everyone.”

Oh, she will, I thought. She’s going to burn the whole library down.

We ended up at a wine bar in the East Side, the kind of place with exposed brick and leather booths and a bartender who called him Mr. Vance. He ordered for us, a bottle of Sancerre, and for an hour, he performed the role of the perfect man. Attentive, self-aware, emotionally available but not clingy. He asked about my parents without pushing. He called my sister “the family favorite” with a careful nonchalance, watching for a reaction. I gave him one—a slight tightening around my eyes, a quick shift of my gaze to my glass. I was giving him the wounded bird he’d been paid to find, and the more I gave, the more he relaxed.

By the second glass, his hand found my knee under the table. By the third, he was leaning in, his voice dropping to a register that was meant to live under my skin.

“I need to tell you something,” he said, his thumb tracing a circle on my leg.

I played the part. I let my breath catch. I let my fingers go still on the stem of my wine glass. This was the moment, the pivot. The first turn toward the cliff he’d been hired to push me off.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“I think I’m in trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“With you.” He ducked his head, then looked up through those absurd lashes. “I came into this thinking one thing. But you’re not like anyone I’ve ever met. And I’m…”

He paused, and for a second, I almost believed the hesitation was real. Then he said it, the line I knew by heart from the recording: “I’m terrified of what I’m feeling.”

The plan was flawless. Make her trust you. Make her fall. Then break her and let the world watch.

The flaw was this: he was sitting across from the only person who knew the whole script.

I reached forward and covered his hand with mine. The skin was warm, and I felt the slight flex of his fingers as they accepted the touch. I looked into his eyes and made my own go soft, dewy, in a way I’d practiced in a mirror until it was muscle memory.

“I’m glad you came tonight,” I said. “I’ve been alone for a long time.”

His pupils dilated. Sweet, hungry predator, thinking he’d found his mark.

I let him kiss me in the parking lot, his lips cold from the night air, his hands gentle on my face. He kissed like a man who’d been told exactly how to kiss a woman like me. Carefully. Worshipfully. The act was so perfect it was almost beautiful. I let myself lean into it, let my lips part, let him believe he was devouring me. My hand slid up to his chest, and I could feel his heartbeat quickening beneath the expensive fabric of his coat. He was excited. Not for me.

For the kill.

When we pulled apart, his forehead rested against mine. “I want to see you again,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

“Yes.” I breathed the word like a prayer.

He drove me back to the garage, walked me to my car, and kissed my knuckles before I got inside. Then he watched me drive away, one hand raised in a small, tender wave. A perfect ending to a perfect scene. In his mind, the trap was closing.

I drove three blocks, pulled into a 24-hour convenience store lot, and killed the engine. Then I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the app for the security cameras in my apartment. The feed showed my living room, empty and still. I switched to the bedroom. Empty. The kitchen. Empty. He hadn’t moved that fast yet; his orders from Lily were to wait until date four.

But I hadn’t gotten this far by assuming.

I opened the note app on my phone and typed a single line into a file named Theodore Vance:

He thinks he’s the predator. He drove me home. He has no idea I still have the knife.

I stared at the words for a long moment, then deleted them. I didn’t need a diary. I had a plan.

I started the car and drove toward the storage unit across town. It was past midnight, and the city was quiet, slick with rain. Tomorrow, Theo would call. He’d make reservations. He’d plan the first stage of my ruin. And I’d be there, dressed like a woman who trusted him, playing the part until the moment the trap snapped shut—on him.

But first, I needed to make a phone call. There was a journalist at the Herald who’d been sitting on a story about the Lund family’s charitable foundation for months, too scared to run it. I had a feeling she might be ready to hear from me.

I pressed the call button and listened to the phone ring, a smile curving my lips as the city lights blurred past.

Let the games begin.