Chapter 1
Rowen
Fifteen years ago, my family stopped supplying the city’s largest luxury department store. Our champagne no longer stood in their shelves, our clothes no longer hung in their halls, and no Ashwood has stepped foot inside Maison Auclair since.
“I just think,” I started once more, leaning back into the black leather of my brother’s office chair, twirling a pen between my fingers.
If someone wanted to talk to Kai Ashwood, it would have to be at Ashwood HQ.
On the fifty-fourth floor. Right next to the corner office that belonged to our grandfather.
And with a view of New York City that made anyone who set foot inside gasp.
“We should at least hear her out. She must’ve donated all that money for a reason. ”
Kai didn’t look up from the screen separating him from me on the other side of his desk. All he said—in that low, bored cadence of his—was, “They.”
“What?”
“They must’ve donated all that money for a reason.
We should at least hear them out.” Finally, his blue eyes cut to me.
I wondered if mine looked as icy, if my brown hair was as sharp a contrast as his.
“Tate Auclair didn’t decide to donate over half a grand to the Ashwood foundation because she desperately wants to go out with you, Rowen.
” I knew that. “The Auclairs donated that money because they want something from us. And you think we should hear them out.”
Potato, potahto. Whether she did or they did, the truth of the matter remained. “Yes.”
Kai looked at me like I might’ve actually lost my mind on the elevator ride up. “The Auclairs?” he doubled down. “Are you listening to yourself? Hunter would leave the entire company to our walking PR nightmare of a brother before he’d let you talk to any of them.”
“Which one?”
Neither of our younger brothers had been doing particularly well in the headlines lately—or, well, ever.
Elliot was trying, at least. The same thing couldn’t be said for Alex.
“Take your pick. It doesn’t matter.” Kai shrugged, eyes wandering to the setting sun.
The rest of the building must’ve mostly emptied out by now, meaning his night was only just beginning.
“What I’m trying to tell you in as few words as possible is that, under no circumstance, can you go on that .
. . date.” He spat the last word. “No matter how much money they spent. No matter how badly you want to know what they want.”
The problem was, I wanted to know so badly, I’d been dreaming up a million different scenarios over the past two weeks, and every single one involved Tate Auclair.
We’d been little kids running around the same galas and sitting at the same tables until the day my grandfather forbade it.
Don’t ever say a word to the Auclairs again.
They are not our allies anymore. After that, the distance between Tate and me grew.
From shy waves and smiles across the room at seven years old to glares at seventeen.
With every year we added, she got prettier.
Or maybe I’d just started noticing pretty girls.
These days, she was twenty-five to my twenty-seven, wore dresses that hugged her figure perfectly, and painted her lips a red that made them hard to forget.
My most recent memory of her still sent a zing of awareness through my entire body.
Of her, at that fundraiser she’d snuck into.
Meticulous posture, holding her paddle high up in the air until the last bidder dropped out at the $650,000 that would win her an evening with me.
There must be more to it. But Tate left before I had the chance to ask that night.
I stopped fiddling with a pen and set it on the desk, the Ashwood lettering facing the high ceiling. “We already got their money. It came in today.”
My brother’s eyes narrowed at the new information, and he focused on his computer screen. Typing wildly while mumbling, “A day late.” His head shook absentmindedly, brown hair swaying with the motion. “Our payment terms say fourteen days. Not fifteen.”
“Well, they’re the Auclairs, Kai. I don’t think they care.” He’d said it himself—they weren’t just another filthy rich family in New York. We got plenty of those here.
What we didn’t usually get, though, was a filthy rich family that hated us, and that we hated right back. The decade-long feud had cost us millions already.
Reasons unknown.
It must’ve been bad, though. Money stood at the top of my grandfather’s personal hierarchy of needs, and Hunter wouldn’t leave a gaping hole where our Maison Auclair profits had been for just anything. This was deep. Personal.
And yet the only heir to the Auclair legacy was willing to spend an arm and a leg just to talk to me.
Kai doubled down. “We’ll wire the money back.”
“Elliot’s not gonna love more than half a million in missing donations.”
The look on my brother’s face told me that he was over this conversation, and he’d very much like me to be, too. I knew, in his head, he’d already kicked me out. Violently, if needed.
“We’ll match them, then. It’s not like half of Elli’s inheritance isn’t already going toward climate change efforts.” He leveled me with a look, still very much over the conversation. “What’s another half a mil?” he deadpanned.
Fuck. This wasn’t going the way I’d expected.
I meant to talk to Kai instead of our grandfather because I thought he would be the more reasonable person. I thought he’d be curious or, at least, cautious enough to want to know what the Auclairs were planning.
But he’d been spending too much time with Hunter, and he wanted that CFO title too badly to risk it over something as trivial as a meeting with Tate Auclair.
I didn’t think she was trivial at all, though.
Getting out of my chair, I paced the length of his office.
“Let me get this straight,” I prefaced. This was so stupid.
So shortsighted and selfish of him that it was frustrating me.
“You want to wire the money they donated—out of the goodness of their hearts, of course—back to them, then match the amount yourself and pretend nothing happened? And you seriously think they’re not going to run a story on that?
Ashwoods are too full of themselves to let someone else do good.
Fraud or just pettiness? Why the Ashwoods aren’t accepting the Auclairs’ money—”
Kai cut off my beautiful rendition of possible future headlines. “Rowen,” he groaned. “It’s not happening. You cannot meet, talk to, or otherwise interact with anyone from that family. Just forget about it.”
The next second, he whirled his screen toward me. Brightly illuminated was the email he’d just sent to Tate Auclair.