Chapter 1
Ellie
The plane lurched violently, sending a shiver through the cabin. I gripped the armrest as turbulence rattled the windows, not surprising, given the reports of snowstorms tearing across Chicago. Beside me, Edward’s voice droned on in that particular monotone he reserved for crisis management, cataloging the cascading disasters this emergency meeting had unleashed upon my carefully orchestrated schedule.
“We can reschedule Senator Asher, ma’am, but the Armenian ambassador is already en route.” His long, slender fingers danced across his iPad screen, then froze mid-gesture. He swallowed hard, and I watched the color drain from his already pale complexion, leaving him nearly translucent in the cabin’s harsh fluorescent light. “We’ll need to get the Secretary of State to make our apologies for today and reschedule the state dinner for Friday.” His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “Provided you are available on Friday.”
The words hung between us. I knew what he really wanted to say:Providing you’re still alive on Friday.
I glanced up at him, catching the fear flickering behind his wire-rimmed glasses, and offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile. My hand found his arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’s going to be okay, Edward.” The words emergedmore soft than reassuring. A promise I desperately wanted to keep, though I had no idea if I could.
He swallowed again, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin throat, then nodded curtly and returned his attention to the glowing screen, once again assuming the role of puppet master pulling the strings that controlled my life.
I never wanted to be President.
Growing up in the weathered clapboard house nestled in the Virginia foothills of Appalachia, I’d harbored the same dreams as every other little girl. Princess, ballerina, rock star. I’d even gone through a phase where I was dead-set on becoming a veterinarian. Though that ambition lasted only as long as it took to nurse the baby squirrel that tumbled from the oak tree in our backyard one July afternoon.
I wasn’t the kind of kid who stood in front of the mirror practicing speeches. My parents were salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar folks. Dad spent his days in a welding shop, coming home with burn marks on his forearms and metal shavings in his hair, while Mom counted other people’s money behind a scratched plexiglass window at the First National Bank. But despite their modest means, they worked and saved, determined that their daughter would have what they never did. A college education. Thanks to their sacrifice and the patchwork of scholarships I’d cobbled together, I graduated with honors from Emory Law School, my parents beaming in the audience with tears streaming down their faces.
Even then, I was content to settle into the comfortable obscurity of Hopper, Dellacroix, and Prescott, a mid-sized firm in Virginia Beach that specialized in military defense. I spent my days navigating the world of court-martials and non-judicial punishments, fighting for the young men and women in uniform who’d made mistakes—some small, some catastrophic—but who all deserved someone in their corner.
Then I met Dalton Bradford.
He walked into the courtroom as if he owned it. Navy JAG Corps, with the kind of presence that made people straighten their spines without realizing it. Tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair wavy enough that it never quite stayed in regulation and eyes sharp enough to dissect a legal argument in seconds. We were on opposite sides of a case. Me defending a young sailor who’d gone AWOL to be present for his daughter’s birth, while Dalton prosecuted. We fought like wildcats in that courtroom, but afterward, over terrible coffee in paper cups, we discovered we agreed on almost everything that mattered.
We married a year later in a small ceremony that my parents cried through from beginning to end. A year after that, Dalton shocked everyone, including me, by resigning his commission to run for a vacant congressional seat. Four years later, he got elected to the Senate, and I gave up my legal practice to become the spouse who stood slightly behind and to the left, smiling for the cameras.
Dalton loved politics with a passion, and I loved him with the same intensity. Only in hindsight did I wish we hadn’t postponed having children—always sayingnext yearorafter this election—to focus on his political ascent. There would be time, we told ourselves. There was always going to be time.
But we were wrong.
Dalton was killed nine years ago in a random drive-by shooting as he campaigned in a crime-ridden neighborhood of Fayetteville, pressing flesh and making promises to people everyone else had forgotten. I’d woken up that morning with a sinus infection, or I would have been at his side, and most likely lying in a morgue drawer beside him. Instead, I got the phone call that shattered my world intobeforeandafter.
When the governor appointed me to fill Dalton’s senate seat until the next election, I was drowning in grief. I thoughtimmersing myself in the work he’d loved would somehow help me hold on to him. That I might feel his presence in the marble halls where he’d served with such purpose.
When party leadership approached me about running for a full term, I said yes for the same reason—to honor Dalton’s legacy, to finish what he’d started. It felt like the only way to make his death meaningful.
But somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened. I discovered I was surprisingly good at politics. My blue-collar upbringing had given me a pragmatism and plain-spoken directness that cut through political doublespeak like a knife through butter. More than that, I’d grown up in the economic realities many of my constituents faced. Having to choose between groceries and medication, the terror of an unexpected car repair, the grinding exhaustion of working two jobs and still falling behind. When I spoke about these struggles, people knew I wasn’t reading from a briefing book. They could see it in my eyes. I remembered.
Despite the relentless pull of party politics and the promises of lobbyists, I voted my heart and conscience every single time. It made some politicians hate me. I’d been called “difficult,” “uncooperative,” and far worse in closed-door meetings. But it made most of the population at large love me, or at least trust me, which in politics was even more valuable.
When Alabama Governor Jackson Duncan first approached me about joining his ticket as vice president, I declined without hesitation. He asked again. I declined again. By the sixth time, it had become almost comical. His persistence versus my stubbornness, an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.
My mama didn’t raise an idiot. I knew exactly why he wanted me. At thirty-nine, I was the photogenic widow who had devoted herself to fulfilling her late husband’s legacy. Apolitician who had built a reputation for being honest and fair in a world built on lies and compromises. I had good optics. The kind of running mate who could soften his patrician edges and appeal to working-class voters who saw the silver-spoon born Jackson as out of touch.
Jackson needed me far more than I needed him, and he knew it. So, he made promises. My role would be small, manageable, almost ceremonial. I’d handle the lesser issues. Education initiatives, veterans’ affairs, the ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and photo ops that came with the office. He’d carry the weight of the presidency.
Then the fucker died.
An undetected brain aneurysm, six months into his term. One minute, I was delivering remarks at the opening of a new presidential library in Kansas City. The next thing I knew, I was being rushed into a secure room where grim-faced Secret Service agents and the White House Counsel waited. Before I could fully process what was happening, somebody shoved a Bible under my hand, and I said yes to being sworn in as leader of the free world.
Edwards’s crisp voice cut through the fog of memory, pulling me back to the present. “And you have another invitation to dinner from Declan Hewes.”
The name alone sent an involuntary shiver crawling up my spine.
Declan Hewes. Tech billionaire.
He’d been circling me like a shark since the day I took the oath, his invitations arriving with clockwork persistence. I’d become an expert at the polite deflection, the artful dodge, but the man had connections—particularly his friendship with Senator Pruitt—that earned him access to every gala, fundraiser, and state dinner on the calendar. People magazine had crowned him theSexiest Man Alivea few years ago; his chiseledfeatures and carefully tousled hair plastered across social media. Personally, I found him about as appealing as week-old fish wrapped in expensive cologne.
