Chapter 2

Then I heard him sigh, low and reluctant, breaking the silence of the study.

"...Fine."

Back in the bedroom, I sat at the vanity and pulled the clip from my hair, and a mass of long, seaweed-dark curls tumbled loose.

In the mirror, Solomon had already taken off his gold-rimmed glasses. He stood behind me, unfastening the ties of his robe one by one.

Without the lenses to hide behind, whatever moved in those peach-blossom eyes had nowhere left to go.

Restraint. Control. And something I couldn't name... exhaustion.

He was always like this, a well so deep you couldn't see the bottom of it, and no matter how large a stone I threw in, it never so much as rippled.

Only when Meg's name came up, or when I used the Fox family's power to force his hand, did that still water stir at all. And even then it settled again fast.

I looked at the two of us in the mirror, our reflections set apart, and suddenly I remembered the first time I ever saw him.

I was sixteen that year, just brought to the Fox house from the countryside by the man who was my father in name only, Sam Fox.

My mother was an unknown painter. She died of illness when I was ten. Only at the very end did she tell me that my real father was the famous chairman of Fox Group in Ashford City.

She told me to go find him. She said Sam owed her a great deal from when he was young, and that he would take good care of me.

But my mother died never knowing that a man's promise is the least reliable thing in the world.

Sam did bring me home. Not out of guilt, though. His precious son, my dear "brother" Herbert Fox, had been diagnosed with a rare blood disease and needed a bone-marrow transplant.

And I was the backup "marrow bank."

Life in the Fox house was hardly better than picking through trash with my grandmother back in the countryside.

My stepmother, Marion Chavez, was a smiling tiger. In front of Sam she fussed over me, cooing "Dot, Dot" as if I were her own flesh and blood.

But the moment his back was turned, her eyes went cold as ice picks, and every word out of her reminded me that I was nothing but a shameful illegitimate daughter, a stain on the Fox name.

Herbert was worse. He was the only heir to the Fox family, spoiled beyond all limits since childhood. He couldn't stand me, felt I'd stolen away some of his father's attention, and made a game of tormenting me.

He'd cut the power while I was in the shower. He'd pour soy sauce into my milk. He'd tear the homework I'd worked so hard on to shreds.

And all I could do was take it.

Because I knew I had nothing to fight back with.

The first time I saw Solomon Delgado was at Herbert's sixteenth birthday party.

The party that night was lavish beyond words, packed with guests. I wore an old dress washed pale with age, an ugly duckling wandered into Swan Lake, huddled awkwardly in a corner and trying to make myself invisible.

Herbert stood at the center of a crowd of rich kids like a king on his throne. He spotted me at once, took a glass of red wine, and came weaving over toward me.

"Well, if it isn't my little country-bred bastard sister. What's this, you actually dared show up to my birthday dressed like that? Come to beg for scraps?" He laughed, easy and cruel, and the other young men around him roared along with him.

I clenched my fists, nails digging deep into my palms, and kept my head down, saying nothing.

"What, gone mute?" When I didn't answer, Herbert felt he'd lost face, and he pushed it further, reaching out to yank at my dress. "Let's have a look at what treasure you've got hidden under this rag..."

Just as his hand was about to touch me, a long, strong hand closed firmly around his wrist.

"Herbert. That's enough."

The voice was cool and clean, like a scoop of clear spring water in high summer, and in an instant it drowned out all the noise around us.

I lifted my head and fell straight into a pair of deep, dark eyes.

The boy wore a well-cut white suit, standing tall and straight as a pine, striking in a way that set him apart. He was half a head taller than Herbert, and though they were about the same age, his presence was so powerful you didn't dare look at him directly.

He was Solomon Delgado, the only son of the Delgado family, and the dream man of every socialite and young woman in Ashford City.

Herbert was clearly afraid of him. He struggled a moment, then sheepishly drew his hand back. "Solomon, I... I was just messing with her."

"She's your sister." Solomon spoke lightly, his voice quiet but carrying an authority that left no room for argument. "That's not how you joke."

Then he took off his own suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders.

The jacket still held the warmth of his body and a faint scent of soap, and it wrapped around all of me.

In that moment, all the mockery and contempt around me seemed to vanish.

In my whole world there was only the look in his eyes as he lowered them to me, tender and full of pity.

From that day on, the name Solomon Delgado was like a seed. In the barren, desolate ground of my heart it took root and sprouted.

I began to gather everything about him I could, obsessively. I knew what he liked and what he hated.

I knew which cafe he liked to read in, which route he took home.

I chased my god like the most devout of believers.

I thought that if I only worked hard enough, made myself good enough, one day I could stand at his side out in the open.

But I forgot that gods have their own believers.

And I was never the one who got chosen.

He had Meg Swanson, the girl who matched his family, his childhood sweetheart. Standing together, they looked like the prince and princess from a fairy tale, made for each other.

And I was just a weed in a dark corner, without even the right to look up at them.

Later, the Delgado family collapsed overnight. Solomon's father, ruined by a failed investment and buried under enormous debt, jumped to his death. Delgado Group teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

The friends who had once circled around Solomon all disappeared overnight.

Even Meg left him in his hardest hour, using study abroad as her excuse.

That was the first time I saw him brought so low.

He sat alone on the rooftop terrace at the top of the company, drunk out of his mind, eyes rimmed red, like a cornered animal abandoned by the whole world.

I walked over, sat down beside him, and handed him a bank card.

"That's everything my mother left me, plus what I've saved over the years. It isn't much, but it should keep you going for a while."

He lifted his bleary, drunken eyes and looked at me for a long time before he spoke, his voice rough. "Why?"

Why?

I looked at his handsome, worn-out face, and my heart felt as if an unseen hand had seized it and squeezed until I could barely breathe.

How I wanted to tell him: because I love you. I've loved you for my whole youth.