With my fingertips resting against the icy floor-to-ceiling glass of my sixty-fifth-floor penthouse office, I watched violet twilight engulf the streets below. The Opeline rose beneath my handcrafted Italian loafers, its dark tower descending toward the harbor waters. The immense black tower was an architectural landmark. Every inch of its imported limestone exterior, every hand-cut crystal suspended in the atrium, and every thread of eight-hundred-count Egyptian cotton in its four hundred luxury suites was indisputably mine. StudyChemistry Yet a sleek smartphone vibrated on the broad surface of my black marble desk. The glowing message reminded me that, to my own relatives, I remained the unwanted stray they had thrown into the winter cold ten years earlier.

an impeccably cut, dark charcoal pantsuit crafted by a bespoke Savile Row tailor, without ornament except antique platinum cufflinks. Yet to Harper, obsessed with visible labels, no conspicuous branding meant I must be poor.

“Did you rent that oversized suit from a community theater company, Blair?” Harper mocked, her voice dripping with poison. “Or did you dig it out of the lost-and-found bin of whatever highway motel lobby you’re currently vacuuming?”

“I came to wish Dad a happy sixty-fifth birthday,” I replied calmly, ignoring my sister entirely and keeping my

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