He Fell For His Executioner

In the Blackwood household, Talia is the ward with no name and no dignity, kept around for Portia Blackwood to torment. When the family drags home Killian, the long-lost bastard son, Portia orders Talia to humiliate him—first with designer stilettos, then with ice water in the frozen courtyard. But Talia's clumsy cruelty keeps failing: she falls into him instead of crushing his hand, soaks herself instead of him, and secretly feeds him stolen food.

Beneath Portia's watchful cruelty, Talia's small kindnesses bind her to Killian in dangerous silence. Then she overhears the family's plan to stage a fatal accident and have him killed before the inheritance is settled. She runs through the rain to warn him that he has to leave at once.

Years later, Killian is the most feared billionaire in Manhattan's elite circles, and he has Talia caged in a Hudson Valley estate, pressing her fingers to a blade and asking if she remembers the knife.