My masters

CHAPTER 1

New Beginning

EMMA

The champagne glass felt heavy in my hand. I stared at the bubbles rising to the surface, tiny perfect spheres racing upward like they couldn't wait to escape. I knew exactly how they felt.

"Emma, darling, you look miles away." David's mother touched my arm, her smile sharp and bright like broken glass. "Wedding jitters?"

I forced my lips into a smile. The expression felt painted on, like it belonged to someone else. "Just excited, Mrs. Chen."

"Please, call me Margaret. After tomorrow, we'll be family." She squeezed my arm tighter. "You're getting such a good man. My David will take excellent care of you."

The words should have made me happy. Instead, they settled in my stomach like stones. I nodded and took a sip of champagne I didn't want. Around me, the engagement party continued. Women in expensive dresses and men in designer suits filled my father's house, no, my stepmother's house now. My father had been dead for six months, but Patricia had wasted no time making the place hers.

"There's my beautiful bride-to-be." David appeared at my side, sliding his arm around my waist. His cologne was too strong, something expensive and woody that he'd worn for as long as I'd known him. Five years. Half a decade of my life.

I used to think I loved him. Now I can't even remember why.

"I was just telling Emma how lucky she is," Margaret said. "You'll make such beautiful babies."

David laughed. "Let's get through the wedding first, Mom."

But his hand tightened on my waist in a way that felt like ownership. Like I was something he'd already purchased and was waiting to take home. I wanted to pull away but didn't. Good girls didn't make scenes. Good girls smiled and nodded and let themselves be handled like expensive china.

My mother would have hated this. The thought came suddenly, painfully. Mom would have taken one look at David Chen and seen right through him. But Mom was dead. Had been for five years. And I'd spent those five years trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be.

"I need some air," I said quietly.

David's smile didn't reach his eyes. "The party is for you, Emma. You can't just leave."

"I'll be five minutes. I just need to step outside."

"I'll come with you."

"No." The word came out sharper than I intended. Several people turned to look. I softened my voice. "I mean, you should stay with your mother. I'll be right back."

I walked away before he could argue, feeling his eyes on my back like a weight. The house was too crowded, too loud, filled with people I barely knew celebrating a wedding I didn't want. I pushed through the French doors onto the back patio and kept walking, down the stone steps into the garden my mother had planted.

It was smaller now. Patricia had dug up half of it to put in a koi pond. The roses my mother had loved were gone, replaced with sterile modern landscaping. But in the far corner, hidden behind a trellis, a few of Mom's flowers survived. I found them in the dimness, white jasmine that glowed in the moonlight.

I pressed my face to the flowers and breathed in their scent. My mother used to wear jasmine perfume. For just a moment, I could pretend she was here, that I could ask her what to do.

"You'd tell me not to marry him, wouldn't you?" I whispered to the flowers. "You'd tell me I'm making a mistake."

The jasmine didn't answer. Nothing did. I was alone with a choice I'd already made, a wedding planned for tomorrow that I couldn't figure out how to stop. David's family had spent a fortune. Two hundred guests were flying in. My stepmother had been planning it for months, not because she loved me, but because she loved the spectacle.

If I called it off now, everyone would think I was crazy. Unstable. Having a breakdown.

Maybe I was.

My phone buzzed in my clutch. A text from Melissa, my stepsister: "Where are you? David's looking for you."

I stared at the message. Melissa had been strange lately. Distant. She'd barely helped with wedding planning even though she was supposed to be my maid of honor. Every time I tried to talk to her, she made excuses and left.

Another text came through, this one from David: "Come back inside. Now."

The command in that single word made my hands shake. When had he started talking to me like that? Or had he always, and I'd just been too blind to notice?

I should go back. I knew I should. Instead, I found myself walking deeper into the garden, away from the house and the party and the life that felt like a beautiful prison. My heels sank into the soft grass. I kicked them off and kept walking barefoot.

At the back of the property, there was a gate I hadn't opened in years. It led to the small studio apartment above the garage where Mom used to paint. After she died, Dad locked it up. Said it was too painful to see her things. Now it was probably full of Patricia's storage.

But when I tried the handle, the door swung open.

The apartment was exactly as Mom had left it. Paintings lined the walls, landscapes of a beach town I barely remembered. Coral Bay, where we used to spend summers before Dad got too busy. Where Mom grew up. The canvases showed cliffs and waves and a big house with a wraparound porch.

Seaside Manor. The beach house.

I'd forgotten about it. Or maybe I'd forced myself to forget because the memories hurt too much. Long summers swimming in the ocean, building sandcastles, Mom laughing as she photographed tide pools. She'd loved that house more than anywhere in the world.

What had happened to it after she died? I didn't know. Dad had never mentioned it, and I'd been too lost in grief to ask.

On Mom's easel sat an unfinished painting of Seaside Manor at sunset. Next to it, a letter with my name on it in her handwriting.

My hands shook as I picked it up. The envelope wasn't sealed. Inside was a single page dated three days before she died.

"My darling Emma," it read. "If you're reading this, I'm gone. I'm so sorry I couldn't stay to see the beautiful woman I know you'll become. There are things I need to tell you, truths about your father and our marriage that you're too young to understand right now. I've left instructions with my lawyer. When the time is right, you'll inherit Seaside Manor. Go there. Live there. Remember who you are. Remember that you come from a line of strong women who chose their own paths. Don't let anyone make you small. I love you forever. Mom."

I read it three times before the tears came. Great choking sobs that I'd held back for five years. Mom had known something was wrong. She'd tried to protect me even in death. And I'd been so lost in grief and then so controlled by Dad and Patricia and David that I'd never asked the questions I should have asked.

The door to the apartment opened. I spun around, clutching the letter.

David stood in the doorway. His face was cold. "I've been looking everywhere for you. What are you doing out here?"

"Reading a letter from my mother."

"Your mother is dead, Emma. You need to let go and move forward." He walked toward me, his voice getting softer, more dangerous. "With me. With our life. Tomorrow is our wedding day. I need you focused."

Something in me snapped. Maybe it was the champagne I hadn't wanted. Maybe it was five years of being told who to be. Maybe it was my mother's words telling me to choose my own path.

"I need to tell you something," I said quietly.

David smiled, thinking he'd won. "What is it, sweetheart?"

"I don't want to marry you."

The smile froze on his face. "What?"

"I don't want to marry you. I don't think I ever did. I think I just didn't know how to say no."

His expression changed, hardening into something ugly. "You're having cold feet. It's normal. We'll go back to the party, you'll have some water, and"

"No." The word felt powerful. "I'm not going back. I'm done."

"Emma." His voice was a warning now. "Don't do this. Don't embarrass me in front of everyone."

"This isn't about you."

"Everything is about me!" He grabbed my arm, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "I've spent two years getting you ready to be my wife. I've invested time and money and effort into making you perfect. You don't get to just walk away."

I stared at him. At the man I'd thought I would spend my life with. And I saw him clearly for the first time. He didn't love me. He'd never loved me. I was a project. A pretty thing to display.

"Let go of me."

"We're going back to that party, and you're going to smile and"

"Let go of me now, or I scream."

He dropped my arm like I'd burned him. "You're making a mistake. Without me, you're nothing. You have no money of your own, no career, no future. Your stepmother will cut you off. You'll have nowhere to go."

"I'll figure it out."

"You'll be back," he said coldly. "By tomorrow morning, you'll realize how stupid you're being, and you'll come crawling back. And when you do, I might still marry you. If you apologize properly."

I walked past him without answering. Back through the garden, avoiding the party. I went straight to my old bedroom, Patricia had redecorated it, but some of my things were still in the closet. I grabbed a bag and started throwing in clothes.

My phone exploded with texts. David. Patricia. Melissa. People from the party. I turned it off.

Twenty minutes later, I was in my car with a hastily packed bag and my mother's letter. I had no plan, no destination. I just drove.

Hours passed. The city lights faded behind me. I drove north along the coast, following instinct more than reason. My mother's words kept echoing in my head: "Go to Seaside Manor. Remember who you are."

I didn't even know if the house still existed. But I had to try.

Dawn was breaking when I finally saw the sign: Welcome to Coral Bay. The little beach town looked exactly like Mom's paintings. Pastel houses, winding streets, cliffs dropping down to the ocean.

I followed half-remembered directions until I found it. Seaside Manor sat on a cliff overlooking the water, a sprawling white house with a wraparound porch and weathered blue shutters. It was bigger than I remembered, more beautiful.

And there were lights on inside.

My heart sank. Someone else owned it now. Of course they did. It had been five years.

But I was so tired. Too tired to drive anymore, too tired to think. I pulled into the circular driveway and put the car in park. I'd just rest for a few minutes. Just close my eyes. Then I'd figure out what to do next.

I leaned my head against the steering wheel.

And that was where Liam Hart found me an hour later, when he came out to start his morning run and saw a strange car in the driveway with a red-haired woman sleeping behind the wheel, tears dried on her face, wearing a wrinkled bridesmaid dress that looked like it had cost more than his truck.

He tapped on the window.

I jerked awake, disoriented and terrified. A tall man with dark hair and gray eyes was staring at me through the glass, concern written across his handsome face.

I didn't know it yet, but my whole life was about to change.