Chapter 1: The Last Sterling

Aria's POV

I stayed in the rehearsal room at Lincoln Center until dusk.

Diane Holloway, my mentor at Lincoln Center, set a white envelope on my music stand.

"Your father's secretary dropped this off this afternoon. The Sterling family has a dinner tonight in the Hamptons."

My phone buzzed. Julian.

Tonight matters.

I stared at the screen and felt the corner of my mouth pull up. I'd been waiting for him to just commit, to turn whatever we were into something with an actual name.

I remember thinking, with complete sincerity, that this was a good omen.

Same estate. Same everything.

I found Julian in the crowd. Savile Row gray suit. He saw me coming and something flickered behind his eyes — fast, gone — and then the familiar, easy smile settled back into place.

"You made it," he said.

That was it. I stood there for two full seconds, waiting for something more, waiting for his eyes to carry some actual warmth. Nothing.

I noticed someone new standing in the center of the room.

Who is that. Why does she look familiar. Why is she standing where I'm supposed to be.

She was positioned next to my father Edward, ivory gown, eyes slightly damp at the edges, mouth arranged into something fragile and carefully calibrated. A photography team moved around her in a tight triangle.

I watched her and felt something rise in my chest that wasn't quite fear.

My father picked up the microphone and cleared his throat.

His voice was calm. Unhurried. Like a man reading from a statement he had reviewed weeks ago.

"What I am about to say will be very difficult to believe. But our family has been the victim of a serious medical error. The girl we raised for over twenty years is not our biological daughter. DNA testing has confirmed what we now know to be true. The young woman standing beside me —" he paused, just briefly, "— Stella — is the true heir to the Sterling family."

The floor did something strange under my feet.

Not the floor. My world.

Stella. The name circled in my head and something started clicking into place — fragments stitching together. The face. The ads. The Instagram account I'd scrolled past a dozen times without registering why it felt familiar. Of course. Of course it's her.

Someone near the back said "Oh my God" just above a whisper. The whole room seemed to hold its breath, and then every pair of eyes in the place slowly turned toward me.

My father didn't look at me. He stood beside Stella, expression composed, like this was a formality he'd already sorted out weeks ago and tonight was just the public-facing portion. Twenty-six years. He raised me for twenty-six years, and he used forty seconds to announce this, and then he picked up his champagne.

My mind went completely blank.

The room was still buzzing when Julian walked toward Stella.

He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and produced a small dark-blue velvet box. He went down on one knee.

Flashbulbs.

"Stella Sterling," his voice carried across the whole room, clear and unhurried, "I want to spend the rest of my life standing beside the real you."

He put extra weight on Sterling. I noticed that. A little reminder, in case anyone in the room had missed the implication.

Tonight matters. His text from this morning made one slow pass through my head.

And this time I understood it.

God, Aria. You absolute idiot. The voice in my head was merciless.

Tonight matters — not to me. It was never about me. He knew exactly what was going to happen tonight. He knew, and he still sent that text, and he still smiled at me when I walked over, and he let me stand here and watch the whole thing. I just stood there like a prop in his plan and called it a relationship.

You absolute fool.

The blank space in my chest filled up.

Not heartbreak. Something sharper. A clean, sober, bone-deep fury that started somewhere around my stomach and burned straight up.

Then I reached over, lifted a fresh glass of red off the nearest server's tray, and walked straight back to Julian.

He was just getting to his feet, Stella's hand in his. He saw me coming and something cautious moved across his face.

"Aria, I —"

I threw the wine in his face.

It ran down his hairline, soaked into his jacket, dripped off his chin. The room went silent for the second time tonight.

"We had known each other for twenty years," I said. My voice was level. "You wasted twenty fucking years of my life."

I was almost at the door when my mother stepped in front of me.

"The trust will be transferred to Stella," she said, her voice perfectly even. "The apartment reverts to the family tonight."

I stared at her.

"You'll need to make other arrangements."

I got a cab and gave the Upper East Side address.

My phone was going insane. I silenced it without looking and leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes.

I couldn't stop the replay. My father's voice. Julian dropping to one knee. Stella's face. The images kept cycling, one after the other, no way to shut them off.

Why didn't he tell me privately first. Why announce it like that, in front of everyone. Is this punishment? For taking up space that was supposed to be hers? We lived together for twenty-six years. He's my father. Was my father.

I thought that apartment was mine. I thought that name was mine. I thought Julian was mine.

The cab stopped in front of my building. I held my key fob to the reader.

Red light.

I tried again.

Red light.

Of course. Of course the door doesn't know me anymore. The lease is under the Sterling family. The trust fund pays the monthly. From the moment my father said what he said tonight, this door stopped being mine.

That was the first time it really landed — I had nowhere. No backup plan. Nothing.

The driver was still waiting.

"Somewhere else," I said.

"Where?"

I thought about it for about three seconds.

"Nearest bar."

I ordered a whiskey.

I drank it in one go and pushed the glass back. "Again."

By the second round, the images started blurring at the edges.

By the third, the stool felt like it was moving.

I know I'm drunk. I know this isn't a solution. But I had absolutely no bandwidth left to be the composed, functional, problem-solving version of myself tonight. Let me fall apart for one night. I'll deal with it tomorrow.

I pushed myself off the stool to find the bathroom and my legs decided not to cooperate. I stumbled sideways, straight into someone who had just walked up beside me.

He didn't move. I bounced off him and staggered back, couldn't find my footing, grabbed the first thing my hand landed on — which turned out to be his collar — and pulled him with me as I tipped back against the bar.

I looked up to apologize.

The room was dim. I couldn't see his face clearly.

He was leaning against the bar now, black hoodie, a dark mole at the outer corner of his eye.

He glanced down at where my fist was still wrapped in his collar. Then he looked back up at me.

I didn't let go. Part of my brain said he's attractive. Another part said you're drunk, release the man.

I didn't.

"What do you do?" I heard myself ask. My voice had that slightly-floating quality that meant the whiskey was fully in charge. "Are you a model?"

He paused. "No."

"Then why do you look like that."

He went quiet again, and this time I was pretty sure he was trying not to laugh.

Before I could register how that sentence had sounded out loud, I reached up and traced my finger along the line of his face — across his brow bone, down the bridge of his nose, and stopped at the sharp edge of his mouth.

He let me. Didn't pull back.

The rest of it I have in pieces.

I remember tiptoeing up.

Later, we ended up tangled in the sheets.

Then he flipped us, pressed me down, his palm flat against my shoulder, his voice dropping to something steady and clear: "Aria, you started this. When you wake up tomorrow, you don't get to take it back."

And I said, "I won't."