1
Diamond
The helicopter banks left and suddenly there it is: my prison for the foreseeable future.
Big Sur.Cliffs dropping straight into churning gray water. A house that's all glass and sharp angles, perched on the edge of the world like it's daring the ocean to swallow it whole.
I haven't been here in years. The last time, I was sixteen and my father was pretending we were still a family. A "bonding weekend" that lasted exactly thirty-six hours before he got a call and helicoptered back to the city. I spent the rest of the trip alone with the housekeeper, reading romance novels I'd smuggled in my luggage and pretending the empty rooms didn't echo.
Now I'm twenty-three, and Daddy's shipping me back here like defective merchandise.
Full circle.
"We're descending, Miss Sterling." The pilot's voice crackles through my headset.
I don't respond. I've perfected the art of not responding over the past six hours—private car to private jet to private helicopter, all of it arranged by Daddy's people without a single word of input from me. Like I'm cargo. Expensive, troublesome cargo that needs to be stored somewhere remote until the PR crisis blows over.
The helicopter touches down and I yank off my headset before the rotors stop spinning, already reaching for my phone.
No signal.
Of course. I forgot about that—how this place is a beautiful void, cut off from everything. Last time that felt peaceful. Now it feels like a trap.
"Your bags will be brought up, Miss Sterling. Mr. Vega is waiting inside."
Mr. Vega.My babysitter. My warden. Some security contractor my father hired because apparently the death threats in my DMs have gotten "credible." Whatever that means. I've been getting hate since I was fifteen years old—you'd think I'd be used to it by now.
I push open the helicopter door before the pilot can help me, the wind whipping my hair across my face. February in Big Sur is mild and rainy, a far cry from the February I was supposed to be having in Cabo with three of my closest acquaintances and a photographer. Instead I'm here, at the edge of nowhere, because some basement-dwelling psycho with too much time decided I needed to die for the crime of being rich on the internet.
The front door is already open.
And there he is.
I stop walking. Just for a second. Just long enough to take in six-plus feet of tattooed muscle in a black t-shirt, dark hair cropped close, and a face that looks like it's never smiled in its entire existence. Tattoos crawling up his neck. Hands that look like they've done things I don't want to think about.
He looks like the kind of man mothers warn their daughters about.
He looks at me like I'm a problem to be managed.
"Miss Sterling." His voice is lower than I expected. Rougher. "I'm Cesar Vega. Your father hired me."
"I know why you're here." I walk past him without slowing down, heading straight for the east wing. I know this house better than anyone. I know that the third stair creaks, know that the master suite gets the best light in the morning, know that the kitchen has a wine fridge my father doesn't realize I discovered at at sixteen.
Footsteps behind me. Close. I didn't hear him following.
"We need to discuss the security protocols," he says.
"We really don't."
"You stay on the property." He's not asking. "No social media—no posting, no stories, nothing that could give away your location. No visitors. No leaving the house without telling me first."
I stop at my bedroom door and turn to face him. He's close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. They're so dark they're almost black, and there's absolutely nothing in them. No warmth. No reaction to the fact that I'm giving him my best rich-bitch glare.
Most men melt under that glare. This one seems completely immune.
"Those aren't requests," he adds.
"And if I say no?"
