Chapter 1
I had grown up in Europe with my mother.
Since becoming an adult, I had never appeared in public as the Hale heiress.
I joined Brooks using my mother’s last name, Stone.
Ethan only knew that his fiancée would soon return to the United States. He had no idea that I was already sitting in his company’s new hire training room.
On my first day, my coworker Mia pulled me into the break room.
“Eva, you need to stay away from the people in the leadership rotation program.”
She lowered her voice and glanced toward the glass conference room.
Ethan stood in the middle of a group of young executives. His suit was sharp, and his expression was warm. He looked every bit the perfect boss.
“What is wrong with them?”
Mia’s face turned pale.
“They have a private group called the Crown Club.”
“Every time a new class of management trainees joins the company, they choose a woman with no family connections. One of them pretends to pursue her. Once she falls in love, they publicly accuse her of using a man to advance her career.”
I held my coffee cup without saying anything.
Mia lowered her voice again.
“Anna was their target last year. A vice president pursued her for a month. At the anniversary gala, he showed everyone edited messages and claimed she had traded a relationship for a promotion.”
“She was fired that night, and they ruined her references. She interviewed with more than a dozen companies after that. None of them hired her.”
“Did she report them?”
Mia gave me a bitter smile.
“She was reporting the people who will run Brooks one day. Who would risk offending them for an ordinary employee who had already been fired?”
The last bit of hope I had for Ethan was gone.
When my father sent me to evaluate him, he said young men sometimes took stupid games too far.
But treating someone’s life as a toy was not harmless fun.
It was rotten to the core.
At eleven that night, I received an anonymous email.
There was no message.
It contained only a video.
Several members of the leadership rotation program were sitting in a private lounge around a silver raffle drum.
It was filled with copies of the female trainees’ employee badges.
Chloe, the only woman in the group, smiled and pushed the drum toward Ethan.
“It is your turn.”
Ethan reached inside, pulled out a badge, and tossed it onto the table.
The photograph on it was mine.
Someone whistled.
“Eva Stone? You got a pretty one this time.”
Chloe swirled the drink in her glass.
“The anniversary gala is thirty days away. How are you going to play her?”
Ethan looked down at my photograph.
A few seconds later, he smiled.
“First, I’ll make her fall for me. Then I’ll force her to admit in front of the entire company that she’s nothing but a liar who used a man to get ahead.”