Chapter 1
Mia
The grass on my father's grave had finally grown really long.
That was the detail that broke me every year, reminding me that Five years ago the earth took something so precious to me..
"Five years, Dad," I said quietly. "Five years since Victor Hale put you in the ground."
I still had the specific memory that lived inside every visit here: the last morning I saw him alive.
He had been at the kitchen table before sunrise, still in his work shirt from the night before, a glass of water untouched beside his laptop.
He hadn't heard me come downstairs. I watched him for a moment.. He was reading something on the screen.
When he finally looked up and saw me, he smiled. That particular smile, tired and a little embarrassed to be caught this way.
“Hope those bad dreams aren't disturbing you again”, he asked with concern on his face.
“No daddy”, I responded to him.
“Go back to bed then, Mia. I'm gonna come sing you a lullaby later everything's gonna be fine..’
Everything was not fine.
Within three weeks, the newspapers had ran with fraud allegations against him.
Within two months, the court cases had begun. Within four months, the company his own father had built from scratch was gone.
Victor Hale had spent years studying Daniel Cross from a distance.
I noticed this when I was even old enough to put the pieces together.
“Come say hi to Uncle”, Victor said to me, on one of his visits over at our house.
Never did like him as a child and it was clear, from the stairs I could see him, placing some files into our cushion.
This were the files the police later used to pin my dad down.
No matter how hard I testified, when I finally was grown enough to understand it, no one believed me, they all felt I was just saying anything to get my dad out.
Funny how, my mum started seeing him a lot after that incident.
“Yuck”, I said with disgust, as the thought of them being together crossed my mind.
Victor had really been patient. He had been surgical. And when the time came to move, he did it with one clean sweep.
They later ruled my father's death a suicide. I had never believed it. I would never believe it.
I touched the headstone — just my fingertips against the cold stone — and made the same promise I made every year.
I am going to find out what really happened. And I am going to make sure Victor Hale loses everything you lost.
My mother was waiting for me in the living room when I got home. She was standing near the window in a way that told me she had been rehearsing something crazy she was about to spill.
"Mia, I have something important to tell you.", she said immediately I entered.
I dropped my bag on the chair. "Let me guess. Victor.", I said, though hoping it wasn't. That was literally the only thing that made her smile this way ever since Dad died.
Like wtf
Her excitement grew so wild. "How did you know?"
"You've been sneaking phone calls for three months, Mom. I'm not blind.", I said with disgust.
She walked over to me and reached for my hands. I let her take them. She was my mother. I could be angry at her but I still loved her very much.
"Victor is a good man. He makes me happy. ,she said, then paused.
We've decided to get married.", she dropped it.
What!!!!!
"Married," I asked again, hoping I was deaf the first time.
"I know how it sounds —", she was saying before I cut her short.
"He destroyed Dad's company”,I started, ranting at the top of my voice. “His reputation. His entire life. And you want to bring that man into ours."
"Your father made bad decisions, Mia. Victor had nothing to do with his death.*, My mum said shockingly.
I let go of her hands with so much anger.
She was not a stupid woman.
She was a lonely one. There is a difference, and I had spent a long time learning it. She had been alone for five years in a house that still smelled faintly of my father, and Victor Hale had arrived with his money and his deliberate attention and she had been grateful.
I understood that. In a quiet corner of myself I didn't often visit, I even pitied it.
But I could not forgive it.
"He's invited you to the engagement party at his mansion this weekend. It would mean everything to me if you came.", she then dropped the second bomb on me.
I turned away from her and looked out the window. Trying to think of the best way not to sound rude at this point.
But…… something then clicked.
My first instinct was refusal, to cut Victor Hale and my mum out of my life the way you cut rot from good wood.
But coming to think of this.
I've now got free Access
If my mother married Victor Hale, I would have a reason to be inside the Hale house. To attend family events. To be in rooms where conversations happened, where documents existed, where the truth about my father might be waiting behind a locked door. I had been searching for a way in for five years. My own mother had just opened the door.
I turned back to her with a fake smile on my face.
"Fine. I'll go to the party.", I said calmly.
She hugged me with real relief, and I held her and felt the cold calculation running underneath and hated it a little.
But I did not change my mind.
That night I opened the folders I had been building for two years. Public records, business filings, newspaper profiles, court documents from cases quietly settled.
I knew Victor Hale's history better than most journalists who had covered him. What I needed was to get inside.
I read through my files to be conversant with the people I'm definitely gonna be dealing with.
Victor: sixty-one, widower, ran Vanguard Holdings CEO.
Alex, the oldest son: thirty-three, operated on charm and impulse, left a trail of bad decisions that Victor perpetually cleaned up. Useful as a distraction.
Ryan, the younger son: twenty-eight. The profiles barely mentioned him, which in my experience meant he was either irrelevant or more interesting than anyone had bothered to notice.
And then there was Ethan — son of Victor's longtime business partner, raised alongside the Hales, treated as family. Respectful. Loyal. Genuinely, from everything I could find, a decent person.
I stared at Ethan's photograph for a long time.
The plan forming felt ugly even to me.
Marry Ethan
Marrying Ethan meant deceiving a man who had done nothing wrong. It meant using someone's real feelings as a ladder.
I sat with that discomfort. I let it be exactly as heavy as it was.
Then I thought about my father at that kitchen table before sunrise.
I closed the folder.
*"I'll do whatever it takes," I whispered. Not as a boast. As a warning to myself.*
The invitation arrived three days later — heavy cream paper, gold lettering.
Engagement Celebration of Elena Cross and Victor Hale. Hale Mansion. This Saturday.
I held it a moment, the way it announced itself as if there were nothing wrong with the world.
Then I set it on my desk beside my father's photograph and looked at them both.
Dad, guess it's time…
