Ava’s POV:
They say if you’re going to reinvent yourself, you should start with the name.
Mine came from a crosswalk.
A flicker of green light, a panicked glance over my shoulder, and a lie on my lips before I even knew what direction I was running.
Ava Green. Short. Easy. Untraceable.
Not that my mother would lower herself to search for me personally. Athena Sinclaire didn’t look for people. She made people look for her.
But the second she realized I’d vanished—on the eve of my engagement, no less—there’d be chaos. Quiet, clinical chaos, of course. The kind that came with NDAs and private investigators and a whole PR team crafting a story about poor, overwhelmed Ava needing a break from the spotlight.
Not the real story.
Not the one where her daughter chose homelessness over a second arranged marriage.
Not the one where I said no.
Again.
My heels clicked against the polished floor as I sat in a glass room high above the city, waiting for the next phase of my fake life to begin. I smoothed my blazer—a cheap thing I’d bought at a consignment shop and tailored in the back of a laundromat—and stared straight ahead like I belonged here.
Like I wasn’t trembling on the inside.
Not from fear. From freedom.
I’d spent years becoming the woman my mother sculpted. Polished, poised, obedient. A political daughter.
And before that, I’d spent four years at Columbia being compared to him.
Jeremy fucking Callahan.
The only thing worse than being arranged to marry a man you didn’t love… was being told you should be grateful for the privilege.
He was the son of an entertainment mogul. A spoiled, golden-haired mess of ego and misogyny.
He used to flick my books closed mid-sentence. Said it was cute when I scowled. He liked it when I pushed back—just enough to amuse him, never enough to win.
He was the kind of man who grabbed your wrist instead of your hand. Who smirked when professors praised me, and whispered afterward that I should’ve let him answer the question. The kind who wrapped his arm around my waist in front of cameras, then let it drop like dead weight the second the flashes stopped.
The kind who once told me I didn’t need to code if I looked pretty enough in a dress.
He knew nothing about networks or systems architecture, but it didn’t matter. I’d do the assignment, and he’d copy it. Always with a wink. Always like it was a game. Once, I told him I wanted to study in Berlin for a semester. He laughed and said, “What for? Just marry me and build a life worth posting.”
I remember the leather seats in his Bugatti sticking to my thighs that night. The smell of gin on his breath. The way he looked me dead in the eye while some leggy blonde laughed breathlessly under his hands in the backseat.
That was our engagement party.
I didn’t cry. Not in front of him. Not even when he told me afterward that this was just how men were. That I should understand.
My mother did.
She understood perfectly.
And instead of calling off the wedding, she called a fixer. Arranged a quiet apology. A statement about “miscommunication” and “private matters.”
Three days later, she handed me a dossier with a new man inside.
“Just meet him,” she’d said, over coffee like it was nothing. “This one might be better.”
Better.
As if any of them were meant to be good.
She called it a fresh start. A gift.
I called it the last straw.
I ran. Took nothing but my degree, my forged documents, and my rage.
And now here I was. In a tower that touched the clouds. Waiting to be interviewed by a man who, according to Jamie, made interns cry and rivals crumble.
Liam Duarte.
I’d Googled him once. His face was irritatingly symmetrical. All clean lines and dark edges, like someone had carved him from marble and then given him issues.
I didn’t care.
This job wasn’t about him. It was about me. Freedom. A roof over my head. A salary of my own.
I didn’t want romance. Didn’t want protection. I’d had both, and it came with chains.
What I wanted was space to breathe. To prove I wasn’t some decorative pawn. That I could build something with my own hands, not with my last name.
The two secretaries who escorted me in—Tina and Ashley, their names sharp in my mind like labels on folders—had given me the usual tight-lipped corporate smiles. Fake concern. Thinly veiled curiosity.
I’d caught them lingering outside after they dropped me off. Their heels paused just long enough for one of them to say:
“How long before she sleeps with him to get the job?”
A pause.
Then a soft, conspiratorial laugh.
“I give it a week.”
The door opened. I sat up straighter.
A pair of low voices drifted in. Footsteps. Heavy, confident. The energy shifted like gravity had just decided to pay attention.
And then I saw him.
Liam Duarte walked into the room like he owned it.
Which he did.
He looked... god. Tall. Broad. Dark hair swept back with a little too much rebellion for a CEO. Sharp jaw. Sharper eyes. His mouth pulled into something between a smirk and a threat, and my heart did a backflip it had no right performing.
Our eyes met.
And I felt it. A pull. A flash
Shit.
Don’t be charmed, Ava. Not again. Not by another powerful man.
But then he looked at me like he couldn’t quite believe I was real.
And I realized—he didn’t recognize me, didn’t know who I was.
I was no longer the Sinclaire daughter. No longer a pawn in someone else’s empire.
In this life, I was Ava Green. And I was going to get this job.
Even if it killed me.