The Thorns on My Velvet Petals

I was known as the most delicate rose of the Upper East Side, and no one dared to touch me.

That was because behind me stood the three most powerful dynasties in New York: the Vances, the Sterlings, and the Brookses.

My fiancé, Julian Sterling, was a brilliant law professor who had never lost a case. He was the golden boy of the legal elite. Yet, whenever he looked at me, he would blush like a schoolboy.

My childhood best friend, Christian Brooks, was a rising star in the medical world. When I had a life-threatening fever as a child, he stayed by my bed all night, his eyes bloodshot.