PROLOGUE

The Handkerchief

Ten years ago

The garden was drowning in moonlight.

Mu Chen sat on a stone bench, his back against a weeping willow, his shirt soaked with blood. Not his own not entirely. The gala upstairs hummed with champagne laughter and clinking glasses, but down here, in the shadows, the world was quiet.

He pressed a palm to his ribs. The knife had glanced off bone. A flesh wound. Nothing fatal. Nothing that would stop him from walking back inside and shaking the hand of the man who had just tried to kill him.

That was the game, after all. Smile. Bleed. Smile again.

He closed his eyes.

Just for a moment.

"You're going to ruin your shirt."

The voice was soft. Young. Female.

He opened his eyes.

A girl stood three feet away, clutching a glass of juice. She couldn't have been more than eighteen slender, plain-faced, dressed in an off-the-rack dress that screamed hand-me-down. Her dark hair was escaping its clip. Her eyes, though. Those eyes were the color of warm tea, and they were looking at him without fear.

Without the usual hunger.

"You're bleeding," she said, stepping closer.

"Go back inside."

"You're Mu Chen, aren't you?" She didn't wait for an answer. She set down her juice, pulled a handkerchief from her small clutch, and knelt beside him. "My stepmother says you're dangerous."

"I am."

"Then why are you sitting alone in a garden bleeding?"

He had no answer for that.

She pressed the handkerchief against his ribs. Her hands were gentle. Shaking, but gentle. "This will stain. It's my mother's."

"Then don't waste it on me."

She looked up. Their faces were inches apart. He could smell jasmine her soap, maybe. Or just her.

"My mother says a kind deed is never wasted," she said quietly. "Even on dangerous men."

Mu Chen stared at her.

No one had touched him like this in years. Not with care. Not without asking for something in return. His own family saw him as a weapon. Business rivals saw a target. Women saw a wallet.

This girl? She saw a man bleeding on a bench.

"What's your name?" he asked.

She hesitated. Then: "Lin Wan. No one important."

She finished tying the handkerchief a clumsy knot, but it held. Then she stood, picked up her juice, and walked back toward the mansion.

At the door, she paused.

"You should see a doctor," she called over her shoulder. "And maybe smile more. You look less scary when you're hurt."

Then she was gone.

Mu Chen sat alone for a long time.

He touched the handkerchief. Lin Wan.

He didn't know it yet couldn't have known it but in that moment, something inside him cracked open. Not love. Not yet. But the beginning of an ache that would follow him for ten years.

He would find her again.

He would make her remember.

And he would never, ever let her go.

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