Chapter 1

Music drifted up from the party below, its measured, elegant notes muffled by the walls before they reached the upper floors.

In the narrow stairwell, two middle-aged housekeepers were trying to hand the same dinner tray back to each other.

“I can’t take that up. The guests are still here, and Miss Vivian might need something. You do it.”

The Whitmores were celebrating Vivian’s birthday, and the house was full. Both women had worked there for years. An occasion like this was their chance to make themselves useful to the right person, and perhaps earn a more generous bonus at the end of the year.

“I’m busy too. Can’t she come downstairs? There’s nothing wrong with her legs.”

The other woman was already heading for the reception rooms.

“Just leave it with her. Whether she eats it is her business. Hurry back down when you’re done.”

Left with the tray, the housekeeper looked resentfully at the cold food. She took off her apron and started upstairs.

Blood clearly counted for less than being there. Elise Whitmore was the daughter the family had lost, finally found and brought home, yet seventeen years apart had made her almost a stranger. Vivian, adopted and raised in the house, was the one everyone adored.

The Whitmore parents had died young, leaving their sons an enormous fortune to manage. The boys had grown up with Vivian. They had always treated her as someone precious.

Really, the housekeeper thought, rich brothers were a much safer bet than a rich husband. A husband might lose interest, have an affair, divorce you and leave you with a ruined reputation. Brothers could spoil you for life, then stand behind you even after you married.

The brothers’ bedrooms were on the second floor. Until Elise came home, Vivian had enjoyed the third floor to herself. Her clothes, shoes and bags alone occupied three rooms. She had surrendered one room for Elise, tucked away at the far end of the floor.

The housekeeper stopped outside it and knocked.

Footsteps approached. When the door opened, she momentarily forgot the tray.

The girl wore a cotton-and-linen dress faded from washing. Her face was bare, her skin fair, and she stood straight, her slender neck rising above the simple neckline. Large eyes made her narrow face look smaller still. She blinked slowly, and the housekeeper felt an inexplicable flicker of unease.

“Is that my dinner?”

The woman nodded, realizing she had been staring.

Elise was actually prettier than Vivian. The housekeeper had once caught Vivian without her makeup and barely recognized her. Elise needed none.

Elise glanced at the food. No steam rose from it.

She was the Whitmores’ own daughter, but Vivian had made herself so thoroughly at home that there seemed to be no room left for her. The staff had followed the family’s example. Sometimes her meals arrived cold; sometimes there was scarcely enough on the plate.

Knowing what came next made all this splendor easier to look at.

Within a year, a financial crisis would strip the Whitmores of everything. A family that had stood at the very top of the world’s fortunes would be buried in debt. Their houses, businesses and bank accounts would be frozen, and her brothers would be turned out with nothing.

More than half the guests downstairs would lose most of their wealth, falling from high society into the middle class or lower.

Vivian would tumble out of her privileged existence with them, then disappear.

Elise took the tray and tasted the food.

“Mine’s better.”

The housekeeper stared. The family employed a chef with three Michelin stars, and this girl thought she could cook better? Was something wrong with her?

Elise’s adoptive parents had run a produce stall at a local market. They had little schooling and long working days, often too busy to stop and make lunch. She had learned to cook at home and bring their meals to the stall. Years of practice had made her good at it.

After her brothers lost their money, their friends had been careful to keep their distance. Vivian was nowhere to be found. Elise had taken the four of them home.

Whatever she put on the table vanished almost as soon as she served it. Later, when they had rebuilt their fortunes, even the finest meals from their own chefs had failed to match those plain dinners she had made when they had nowhere else to go.

She had barely had a chance to enjoy those better days. An accident killed her at twenty-five.

Then she had opened her eyes to find herself seventeen again, back when her brothers still thought the world of Vivian.

After the housekeeper left, Elise closed the door and returned to her desk.

A lamp stood at its left corner. An exercise book lay open where she had stopped working.

Her college entrance test results had cost her a place at the university she wanted the first time around. She had never stopped regretting it.

Now she was about to begin eleventh grade again. Since coming back, she had spent most of her time in this room, working through practice questions and finding out how much she remembered.

Quite a lot, fortunately. Her high-school lessons were still there, along with everything she had learned during her senior-year test preparation. She had kept studying throughout her four years of college too.

That morning, she had worked through a science practice test worth a hundred points. She had left a step out of one long-answer solution and would lose a few points for it. Almost everything else was right.

A fortune could disappear overnight. What she learned would stay with her.

Downstairs, light glinted off jewelry and polished surfaces. Vivian stood out among the guests in an expensive powder-blue dress.

“I saw Chloe Grant just now,” one of her classmates said. “I couldn’t even work up the nerve to ask for an autograph.”

Vivian had invited a number of girls from school.

“I’ll get one for you later,” she said, smiling.

“Viv, you’re the best. If I had this many famous people at my birthday, I could die happy.”

“Have something to eat before you drink any more,” another girl teased. “You’re actually imagining yourself having her life? She had you beaten the day she was born.”

Vivian’s smile stiffened, then settled back into place.

At least the Whitmores had never told anyone she was adopted.

“What about that sister your family just found?” someone asked. “I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s shy around people she doesn’t know.” Vivian sounded less interested now. “She usually stays away from things like this.”

“Scared she’ll embarrass herself, more like. Did you see that poll on the school discussion board? I was dying.”

The girls crowded around a phone. The thread had only been up a few hours, but it already ran to page after page, with a little HOT badge beside the title.

You can’t turn a nobody into an heiress. Elise Whitmore gets my vote for the rich girl who looks least like one. Don’t even try to change my mind.

The poll listed several girls from wealthy families. Elise was far ahead of everyone else.

New replies appeared while they watched.

I saw her selling vegetables at a market. Imagine being a Whitmore and doing that. Gross.

Apparently she buys sale stuff from chain stores. There’s no way her family hasn’t given her money. Who’s the poor-girl act supposed to impress?

Maybe they really don’t give her any. Her brothers don’t like her. Have you ever seen a picture of them together? They only take Vivian out.

Vivian’s what someone from that family SHOULD look like.

Agreed. I wouldn’t want Elise for a sister either. She looks like she’s never been anywhere.

Wait, isn’t she transferring here? Please no. Her old school was awful. There goes our average.

My teacher’s already losing hair over it. Apparently they’re all praying she doesn’t end up in their class.

Is there still time to start praying?

Elise Whitmore has ruined rich families for me.

Another vote for Elise.

Put me down for a million votes.

The replies kept coming, nearly all of them at Elise’s expense.

The girls dissolved into laughter.

“No wonder your brothers don’t like her. Can you imagine bringing her anywhere?”

Vivian fought the smile pulling at her mouth. She gave them a look that said they understood perfectly.

“You can give someone money,” she said, “but you can’t buy them any class.”

“Where are your brothers, anyway? When are they getting here?”

Vivian was disappointed that three of the four were out of the country and couldn’t make it.

Adrian, her second-oldest brother, was on a world tour, on the other side of the planet. Theo was in Russia, leading his team through a closed training camp. Miles had gone to Antarctica with his classmates, and the weather had shut down their route home. He wouldn’t be getting back anytime soon.

Their presents, at least, had arrived two weeks earlier.

“Julian’s coming.”

The girls exchanged envious looks.

“I heard he bought the Heart of the Ocean at an auction today. Two and a half million dollars.”

“For a birthday present?” One of them looked genuinely overwhelmed. “I can’t even imagine having that kind of money.”

Vivian answered with a small, pleased smile.

After their parents died, Julian Whitmore had held the family business together while relatives and shareholders circled, waiting to take it apart. He had secured control of the group himself, then expanded it by twenty percent in only a few years. The Whitmore fortune had gone from outside the world’s top fifty to the very top.

Julian was only twenty-five, already worth billions. The Forbes list published earlier that year had put him fifth.

“And the other presents were all worth at least a hundred and forty thousand each,” another girl said. “I’m so jealous it actually hurts.”

But the party was drawing to a close, and Julian still hadn’t appeared.

Vivian tried calling him. His phone was off.

She had been waiting for the presents all evening, especially the Ocean Star. She had seen the jewel in a magazine. The price alone had made her want it, and she had dropped hints for ages before Julian finally went to the auction.

What was taking him so long? Had something happened?

It grew later. Some of her friends were starting to look bored.