Chapter Two
Sierra
The moment I step out of Marco’s study, I don’t stop walking. My pulse pounds loudly in my ears, drowning out the distant conversations echoing through Marco Madera’s mansion as I make my way toward the nearest bathroom.
I force myself not to look back because I’m terrified that if I do, I’ll find Royal standing in the doorway watching me. With those warm brown eyes that somehow manage to strip away every carefully constructed wall I own.
I slip inside the empty powder room and quietly lock the door behind me before gripping the edge of the marble vanity. I stare at my reflection as I struggle to steady my breathing. My lipstick is slightly smudged. My cheeks are flushed.
And my eyes are brighter than they have any right to be after kissing the son of the man I suspect murdered my father. I let out a slow breath and shake my head at the woman staring back at me.
“Get yourself together,” I whisper, though I sound far less convincing than I intend.
I reach into my clutch and pull out my phone with slightly trembling fingers. I open the hidden album I created months ago. The photographs I took only minutes earlier fill the screen. Page after page of documents that had been sitting on Marco’s desk while everyone was distracted by dinner.
My stomach twists as I enlarge the first image, scanning numbers, signatures, and correspondence I’d barely had time to photograph before hearing footsteps behind me.
Royal had almost caught me. Worse, he’d distracted me so completely that I’d nearly forgotten why I’d come into the study in the first place.
The realization leaves me frustrated with myself because that kiss shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have wanted it to happen. Yet the memory of his mouth against mine refuses to fade. I close my eyes for a second, remembering the desperate hunger that took over me.
And how dangerously easy it would’ve been to stay exactly where I was. A tiny, reckless part of me wonders what it would be like to let someone like Royal Madera become my first. He’s devastatingly handsome, charming when he wants to be, and undeniably experienced.
The sort of man who could probably make any woman forget her own name. The thought startles me enough that I actually laugh under my breath before the sound dies almost immediately.
What is wrong with me? I’m standing in the bathroom of a man I believe may have ordered my father’s murder, and somehow, I’m fantasizing about kissing his son again. The absurdity of it would almost be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.
Then another thought pushes its way to the front of my mind, sobering me instantly. If Marco is capable of arranging someone’s death, what does that make Royal? The question settles heavily inside my chest because attraction has a way of blinding people to inconvenient truths.
Royal seems kind. He seems genuine beneath the polished charm he wears in public. But appearances are exactly what men like Marco excel at cultivating, and Royal grew up under the same roof. I don’t know what he knows. I don’t know what he’s involved in.
For all I know, the charming billionaire who spends his weekends tattooing people could be every bit as corrupt as his father. My heart insists otherwise, but my head reminds me that I barely know him. And trusting the wrong person could destroy everything my father worked so hard to protect.
Three years ago, when I inherited Dad’s controlling shares in Thorne Enterprises, I expected endless board meetings, financial reports, and executives who assumed a seventeen-year-old girl couldn’t possibly understand the company she’d suddenly become responsible for.
What I hadn’t expected were the files hidden inside my father’s encrypted computer. Late one night, after everyone else had gone home, I’d stumbled across a folder containing emails, contracts, and internal memos documenting negotiations between Thorne Enterprises and Madera Holdings.
At first, they looked like ordinary business discussions.
But the deeper I dug, the stranger they became.
The negotiations had abruptly stopped only weeks before Dad died.
And scattered throughout his personal notes were vague references to Marco being involved in activities he described only as unacceptable.
Dad had written that he couldn’t move forward with the partnership because there were lines he refused to cross. Yet nowhere had he explained exactly what those lines were. Then, only days later, he was dead in what the police insisted had been a tragic robbery gone wrong.
They never found the killer. They never found a meaningful motive either. But I found enough loose threads to convince me that the timing wasn’t a coincidence. And ever since then I’ve quietly dedicated myself to uncovering the truth.
Now my mother is preparing to marry the very man I believe orchestrated my father’s death. The thought makes me physically ill. I lock my phone again and slip it back into my clutch before staring at my reflection one last time.
I can’t afford distractions, no matter how attractive they happen to be. Until I know exactly who Marco Madera is and whether Royal is anything like him, my heart doesn’t get a vote. After splashing cool water over my wrists, I unlock the bathroom door and step back into the hallway.
I stop short when I find my mother waiting outside. Yvonne offers me a tentative smile, though I immediately notice the way she’s twisting her engagement ring around her finger. It’s a habit she only falls into when she’s nervous.
And for a fleeting moment I see not the glamorous socialite everyone else sees but the widow who spent countless nights crying herself to sleep after losing the love of her life. The sight softens something inside me before I remember whose ring she’s wearing.
“There you are,” she says quietly. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I needed a minute.”
“I noticed.”
Silence stretches between us before she reaches for my hand.
“Are you happy for me?”
The question catches me off guard because she sounds hopeful rather than defensive.
“When were you planning to tell me?” I ask instead. “Before tonight? After the wedding? Or was I supposed to read about your engagement online tomorrow morning?”
Her smile falters. “We wanted to be certain before saying anything.”
“So this has been going on for a while.”
She nods slowly. “Several months.”
Several months. While I was investigating Marco. While I was trying to prove he may have been responsible for Dad’s death.
“It’s only been three years since Dad died.”
Pain flickers across her face before she quickly composes herself. “I know exactly how long it’s been.”
“Do you?” My voice cracks despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “Because it feels like you’re replacing him.”
She lowers her eyes for a moment, and when she looks back at me, they’re glistening with restrained emotion.
“I loved your father,” she says softly. “I still do in many ways. There isn’t a single day that goes by where I don’t think about him.
Sometimes I still expect to hear his car in the driveway or find one of his jackets hanging by the front door.
Grief doesn’t disappear, Sierra. You simply learn how to carry it. ”
The quiet honesty in her voice catches me off guard, and guilt pricks at the edges of my anger because I know she’s telling the truth. But I also know that she’s materialistic and selfish. It shows in her spending habits and how she’d rather chose herself over and over.
“But eventually,” she continues, her fingers tightening around mine, “I realized your father wouldn’t have wanted me to spend the rest of my life alone. He would’ve wanted me to be happy again.”
“With Marco Madera?”
She hesitates just long enough for me to notice. “Yes.”
“I don’t understand how.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do if you’re asking me to welcome him into our family.”
“I’m asking you to give him a chance.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “You already know my answer.”
“Sierra...”
“No.” I gently pull my hand free. “I’m not happy about this engagement, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think you wanted my opinion in the first place. You’d already made your decision before inviting me here tonight.”
She sighs heavily. “I hoped you’d support me.”
I hold her gaze for several long seconds before shaking my head. I can’t tell her what I suspect. Not yet. Not until I have proof.
“I can’t.”
Disappointment settles across her features. “I think you’re letting your grief cloud your judgment.”
“And I think you’re letting his money and influence cloud yours.”
Her expression hardens. “That’s unfair. You think I’d marry someone because he’s wealthy?”
“I think you like what comes with being Mrs. Marco Madera. Just like you did with dad.” The words leave my mouth the instant I think them, and I regret them almost immediately.
She flinches. Not dramatically. Just enough for me to realize I’d struck somewhere painful.
“I loved that your father was successful, Sierra but I truly loved him,” she says quietly. “Don’t ever reduce what we had to money.”
Before I can apologize, she turns and walks away, her shoulders noticeably straighter. I also don’t miss the way she discreetly wipes beneath one eye as she disappears around the corner. I close my eyes briefly, frustration crashing over me from every direction at once.
My mother is hurt. I’m no closer to proving what happened to my father. Royal kissed me. Marco might be a murderer. Nothing about tonight has gone the way I’d planned. I open my eyes to look sideways, and my gaze finds his.
Royal.
He is leaning against the opposite wall with his hands tucked into his trouser pockets, watching me with an expression that’s equal parts curiosity and concern. He must have heard everything. Embarrassment flickers through me.
But it lasts only a heartbeat before my awareness shifts to something infinitely more dangerous. Even standing several feet away, he somehow fills the entire hallway. And despite everything weighing on my mind, and the suspicions consuming me, my pulse betrays me the instant our eyes meet.
For several long moments, neither of us speaks.
The attraction between us settles into the silence. It’s heavy and undeniable, making it dangerously easy to forget every reason I should stay as far away from him as possible. That frightens me more than anything else.
Without trusting myself to say another word, I turn and walk away from him for the second time, refusing to look back even though every instinct urges me to.