Chapter 1: The Dress That Lied

The dress was perfect, which was how Isabella Thorne knew something was wrong. It waited on the mannequin in her dressing room like a bride in a coffin: ivory silk, hand-sewn pearls, a bodice shaped to her ribs so precisely that no living seamstress could have finished the alterations in two days. Her engagement gala began in forty minutes. Downstairs, three hundred guests from Manhattan's oldest money were drinking champagne beneath the Thorne Group crystal chandelier, waiting to celebrate her future with Sebastian Costa. Olivia stood behind her, smiling at their reflections in the mirror. She wore pale rose, the color of a wound pretending to heal. "You look unreal, Bella," Olivia said. "Sebastian will forget how to breathe." Isabella wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe the sister who had slept beside her during thunderstorms, the fiance who had learned her coffee order at fourteen, the grandmother who had kissed her forehead that morning and called her the last bright jewel of the Thorne line. But the zipper caught on something hard. Isabella reached inside the bodice and found a flash drive sewn beneath the lining. For one second, the room lost sound. Then Olivia's hand closed over her wrist. "Where did that come from?" Olivia whispered. The fear in her voice was too clean. Too ready. Isabella stepped back. "You tell me." Olivia's eyes filled with tears so quickly it looked practiced. "Bella, don't go downstairs with that. Please. If someone planted it, we need Grandmother." Grandmother. Martha Thorne, soft-voiced empress of a family that never misplaced a spoon, let alone evidence inside the heiress's engagement dress. Before Isabella could answer, her phone buzzed. An unknown number had sent one line and a photograph. Do not trust the rose-colored dress. The photograph showed Sebastian in the east library with Olivia's arms around his neck. His mouth was on her shoulder. Olivia's bracelet - the pearl one Isabella had given her last Christmas - shone against his black jacket. The phone slid in Isabella's damp palm. Olivia saw the image. Her tears vanished. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way," she said. The door opened behind them. Sebastian entered without knocking, beautiful in his tuxedo, calm as a man arriving for an appointment he had scheduled weeks ago. Two security men followed him. Between them stood Arthur Webb, Thorne Group's legal counsel, holding a folder sealed with red tape. "Isabella," Sebastian said gently, "put down the drive." She looked from his face to Olivia's dry eyes and understood, all at once, that the dress had never been meant to make her beautiful. It had been made to carry the weapon that would kill her life. Downstairs, Martha Thorne's voice rose over the ballroom microphone, sweet and clear. "Ladies and gentlemen, before we celebrate an engagement, the Thorne family must address a betrayal."