The Empire That Fell for a Violin

At the Vance Group's anniversary gala in New York, Julian Vance hands "The Siren's Lament", a legendary violin worth forty-five million dollars, to his childhood sweetheart Bianca Frost instead of proposing to Valerie Sterling, the orphan who has stood by him for five years. Valerie accepts the humiliation calmly and walks away.

In the backstage dressing room, Bianca smashes the violin and has her thugs crush Valerie's right hand, while Tyler Vance forces her to kneel and Victoria Vance slaps her until her eardrum ruptures, branding her a gold digger. They do not know that Valerie is not only a prodigy violinist but the sole heiress of the Sterling family, New York's most powerful old-money empire, which has searched for her for twenty years.

Her hand is ruined, and the Vance family's century-old empire has reached its end.