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CHAPTER ONE
MONACOAGAIN.
It was fitting, really.
Julienne Boucher had been working toward this moment with single-minded passion and bone-deep determination for the past ten years, and it made a certain sense that when she crossed the finish line at long last, she would do it here. At the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo where she had first come ten years ago.
To sell herself.
Julienne’s perilously high heels clicked against the sumptuous marble floors of the Grand Hotel as she walked, passing the flower arrangements that had looked like colorful, exotic jungles to her unsophisticated eyes back then. The lobby had been just as smugly opulent, but the difference was that back then, she’d been terrified that everyone was looking at her. That they knew what she’d come to do. That they couldseeher shame and panic, and more, her determination to go ahead and do it anyway.
Because she had to.
She’d wondered if the horrible men in the village she’d come from—and had escaped earlier that same day—had been right all along. That Boucher women were made for one thing only, the whores. And if that was true, couldeveryonesee that truth all over her? Or was it more of a bad smell...in this place that was lightly scented with ease and wealth and refinement?
Now she knew that if anyone bothered to look at her, what they would see was the elegant, self-possessed woman she’d fought so hard to become. Day by day. Year by year. A woman who was not only sophisticated, but looked as if she belonged in hotels like this one that were more properly works of art.
Because she did. She’d made sure she did.
Julienne could almost see the ghost of her former self walking beside her, reflecting all those nerves and that bone-deep desolation back from the gilt-edged, shiny surfaces, the fragrant orchids, the giddy chandeliers.
This time around, she was healthy. Well fed and well clothed instead of balancing on the precarious edge of total destruction, homeless and penniless. Most important, she was no longer a desperate teenager. No longer a scared sixteen-year-old, bleakly determined to do what she had to do to save her younger sister. Even if that meant losing herself.
Thinking of Fleurette cut through the haunting memories of ten years back and Julienne paused, there outside the famously luxurious lounge bar that catered to the world’s wealthiest. Something she had guessed at then, but knew for a fact now.
Fleurette did not believe in ghosts. She had grown these last ten years, too, and was no longer a fragile waif, sickly and scared. These days Julienne’s younger sister was a force to be reckoned with in every regard. From her brash sleeves of brightly colored tattoos to her defiant piercings and multicolored hair forever cut short, Fleurette made it clear with her every word and deed that she would never bedesperateagain. For anything.
“You’ve finally done it,” Fleurette had said with her usual brisk impatience when Julienne had called her earlier. “That last deal has to be worth billions alone. I think we can both agree that you’ve adequately repaid the man’s kindness. In spades.”
Julienne had made an assenting noise, but she wasn’t as certain as her sister. About anything, if she was honest—but particularly about this.
Because Cristiano Cassara had saved them. And not in a metaphoric sense. He had literally saved their lives that evening ten years ago when he could as easily have hastened their decline or simply ignored their predicament altogether. He had kept the two of them from a dark spiral into almost certain death on the streets—if not that night, then not long after it, because that was how that particular trajectory went. Julienne knew that all too well. But she hadn’t had to test herself against a downward slope into hell that ate girls just like her alive every day. Because Cristiano had whisked both Julienne and Fleurette away into a brand-new life, asked for nothing in return and had left them to it with no interference.
Which meant that repaying him for what he’d done had consumed Julienne’s life ever since.
She had followed him here, to the place it was rumored he came to relax once a year—though Julienne could not imagine the stern, austere head of the Cassara Corporation allowing his spine to curve the faintest inch, much lessrelaxingin any meaningful way. Julienne had worked for the man for almost ten full years and had never seen the faintest stirrings of a smile on his forbidding face.
Not even ahint.
Julienne blew out a long breath and checked her appearance for the hundredth time in one of the shiny mirrors that graced nearly every wall and surface, the better to reflect back to the rich and famous their most favorite view of all—themselves.
Another thing it had taken years to learn. No one in a place like this had time to look at others. Not when they were so busy gazing at themselves.
The truth was, she already knew full well that she was groomed to perfection.
That had been part of the payment she had offered her benefactor from almost the first, though he had never asked for such a thing. Nor noticed that she’d provided it.
But then, she was the one who had been there that night ten years ago, right here in this hotel. She was the one who’d taken her sister and run from the vicious little hill town where they’d been born, abandoned and repeatedly betrayed by what little family they’d had, supposed friends, and vindictive neighbors. All of whom had known what kind of women they were going to become since birth, and had always, always treated them accordingly.
Julienne had used her last handful of euros to buy the bus tickets to get the two of them out of the dead-end place, choked on the fumes of feuds ages old. She’d brazenly stolen a dress from a rack outside a boutique in the Centre Commercial de Fontvieille.
And then, she’d snuck into a bathroom, and done herself up the best she could. The pretty dress. The cheap heels. The lipstick she’d saved from their long-dead mother, though it was crumbling and sad after so long. Enough eye makeup to disguise her shame.
And hopefully her fear, too, which she’d been afraid might have a scent all its own. Acrid. Sharp. Obvious.
She’d snuck into the Grand Hotel, leaving Fleurette hidden as best she could in an alley. Terrified that she’d be grabbed and tossed out at any moment, she’d found her way to the very bar she was approaching now. Back then she’d been astonished by the place, particularly the deep, shining wood that ached with pedigrees and fat purses. Better still, it had been filled with her quarry.
Rich men.
