Chapter 1
Angela
The first rule of ballet is that pain is irrelevant. It is a whisper you learn to ignore, a ghost you allow to haunt the machine of your body without ever acknowledging its presence.
My big toe was bleeding. I could feel the warm, sticky slickness of it inside the hardened box of my pink satin pointe shoe, a friction burn that had likely blistered and burst somewhere around the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade.
But I didn’t stop. You don’t stop. Not when you are the scholarship girl at Sterling University.
Not when you are the daughter of the disgraced equipment manager who supposedly ran off with ten grand of the hockey team’s budget.
You dance until your bones turn to powder, and you smile while you do it.
"Higher, Moretti! Your grand jeté looks like you are hopping over a puddle, not soaring!"
Madame LeClair’s voice cracked through the stale, rosin-dusted air of Studio 4 like a whip. She tapped her cane rhythmically against the marley floor, the sound echoing off the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that reflected my own exhaustion back at me.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, engaged my core until my abs burned, and launched myself into the air again.
My legs split in a perfect hundred-and-eighty-degree line, gravity releasing its hold on me for a fraction of a second.
For that heartbeat, I wasn't Angela Moretti, the pariah. I was weightless. I was pure energy.
Then I landed. The impact shot a jolt of lightning up my shin, settling into a dull, throbbing ache in my hip.
"Better," LeClair sniffed, checking her watch. "Class dismissed. Ladies, the Winter Gala is tonight. I expect those of you volunteering to represent the Arts Department with dignity. Do not embarrass me."
The other girls, clad in lululemon and diamonds, groaned about having to wear formal gowns.
I didn’t have the luxury of groaning. I wasn’t going to the Winter Gala to sip champagne and flirt with future CEOs.
I was going as 'Waitstaff B,' a distinction that came with a black vest, a white bowtie, and ten dollars an hour plus tips.
I unlaced my ribbons with trembling fingers, peeling the satin away from my battered feet.
The blood had dried, gluing the fabric to my skin.
I hissed through my teeth as I yanked it free, quickly covering the damage with a thick wool sock before anyone could see.
Weakness was blood in the water at Sterling.
My phone buzzed against the wooden bench. The screen was cracked—a spiderweb fracture over the time: 4:15 PM.
One New Email: Office of the Bursar.
Subject: URGENT - Tuition Delinquency it stopped entirely. The air in the locker room, thick with the scent of expensive perfume and sweaty bodies, suddenly felt too thin to breathe. I tapped the notification with a shaking finger.
Dear Ms. Moretti,
Following an internal audit regarding the ‘Character & Conduct’ clause of the Sterling Merit Scholarship, the board has voted to rescind your funding effective immediately.
The outstanding balance for the Spring Semester ($48,500) is due by close of business Monday, or your enrollment will be terminated.
The room spun. I gripped the edge of the bench, my knuckles turning white.
Forty-eight thousand dollars. By Monday.
It was Friday.
"No," I whispered, the word scraping out of my dry throat. "No, this is a mistake."
I hadn’t done anything. I was invisible.
I kept my head down. I took extra shifts at the library.
I walked on eggshells every single day to avoid the shadow my father had cast over this campus.
My father, who was currently rotting in a county jail three towns over for a DUI, completely unaware that his legacy was currently drowning me.
"Oh look," a voice trilled from the row of lockers behind me. It was Jessica, a girl whose father owned half of Denver. "The charity case looks like she’s going to be sick. Maybe she realized she smells like wet dog."
Laughter rippled through the room. Soft, cruel, privileged laughter.
I barely heard them. The email burned on my screen. This wasn't just about school. If I lost my student status, I lost the health insurance plan that came with it. The insurance that was currently paying for my mother’s dialysis.
If I got kicked out of Sterling, my mom died. It was that simple.
I shoved my phone into my bag, ignoring the tears pricking the corners of my eyes. I couldn't cry. Crying ruined your makeup, and I had to be at the Sterling Summit Hotel in an hour to serve hors d'oeuvres to the very people who had just ruined my life.
I needed money. I needed a miracle.
But as I walked out into the biting Colorado wind, the snow swirling around the gothic stone architecture of the campus, I knew miracles didn't happen for girls like me. Girls like me got crushed.
Elijah
The Sterling Summit Penthouse smelled like cold ozone and isolation, exactly the way I liked it.
I stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of my living room, looking down at the campus spread out below like a toy village. From this height—thirty stories up—the people were just ants. The problems were microscopic. The noise of the world was silenced by three inches of bulletproof glass.
I adjusted the cuff of my tuxedo jacket, catching my reflection in the dark window.
Elijah Vance. Captain of the Sterling Silverbacks. Heir to the Vance Private Equity empire. "The Iceman."
The press loved that nickname. They thought it referred to my veins on the ice—my ability to slot a puck top-shelf with three defenders trying to take my head off. They didn't understand that the ice wasn't something I turned on for a game. It was the factory setting.
Emotions were variables. Variables created chaos. Chaos led to mistakes. And I didn’t make mistakes.
"Yo, Eli," a voice boomed from the hallway, shattering my peace. "Are we going to this donor jerk-off fest or not? I heard the open bar has Louis XIII."
Jax Slayton strolled into the room, his bow tie already crooked, a flask in his hand. He was my winger, my best friend, and the only person on earth I tolerated for extended periods.
"It’s a gala, Jax," I said, turning away from the window. My voice was low, a flat baritone that usually made people stop talking. "Try not to vomit on a dean this year."
Jax grinned, unbothered. "No promises. You hear the rumor? The board finally axed the Moretti girl’s scholarship. About time. Having that thief’s daughter prancing around in a tutu while we’re trying to rebuild the program’s image... bad optics."
My hand froze halfway to my watch.
I knew Angela Moretti. I knew her better than she realized.
I knew she took her coffee black because she couldn't afford milk. I knew she studied in the stacks on the fourth floor of the library because it was the only place the heating vents worked properly. I knew she walked with a slight turnout in her feet, a permanent mark of her ballet training.
And I knew she had a fire in her.
I’d watched her for three years. Not out of lust—lust was messy—but out of fascination.
She was a creature of pure discipline, just like me.
She lived in a hostile environment, surrounded by predators, yet she refused to break.
She held her chin high even when people whispered "thief" as she passed.
There was a defiance in her dark eyes that triggered something primal in the base of my brain. An itch I hadn’t scratched in a long time. A need to see just how strong that spine of hers really was.
"Since when do you care about the ballet department's funding?" I asked, walking past Jax toward the private elevator.
"I don't," Jax shrugged, following me. "But my dad is on the board. Said your old man pushed for it. Something about 'cleaning house.'"
My jaw tightened. My father. Of course. Cyrus Vance didn't do anything without an angle. If he was targeting a twenty-year-old girl with zero power, he was doing it to manipulate the narrative. Or maybe just for sport.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime.
"Let’s go," I said, stepping inside. The anticipation curled in my gut, hot and heavy.
If Angela Moretti was desperate, she would be dangerous. And if she was dangerous, she would be interesting.
For the first time all season, I wasn't bored.
Angela
The Sterling Winter Gala was a kaleidoscope of excess.
Crystal chandeliers the size of compact cars hung from the vaulted ceiling of the ballroom.
The air was thick with the smell of prime rib, truffle oil, and money.
A string quartet played in the corner, largely ignored by the hundreds of donors, alumni, and students mingling in their five-thousand-dollar gowns.
I adjusted the heavy silver tray in my hand, my wrist aching. I had been invisible for two hours, weaving through the crowd like a ghost, offering champagne flutes and crab cakes.
"Champagne, sir?" I asked a group of men near the ice sculpture.
They didn't look at me. One just reached out, took a glass, and continued talking about his stock portfolio. I was furniture. I was a vending machine in a vest.
My feet were screaming. The adrenaline from the email had faded, leaving behind a cold, hollow dread. Forty-eight thousand dollars. I mentally calculated my tips. Maybe two hundred dollars tonight.
I was drowning, and I was serving drinks on the Titanic.
I turned toward the service corridor to reload my tray, my eyes scanning the floor to avoid eye contact. That’s when I saw him.
Elijah Vance.
He was standing near the VIP dais, holding a tumbler of scotch like a weapon. He was wearing a tuxedo that fit him so perfectly it looked like it had been sewn onto his body. He was taller than everyone else in the room, broad-shouldered and imposing, a dark monolith in a sea of sequins.
And he was looking right at me.