I chose the brother in the mask. Everyone I knew called me insane. But on our honeymoon, he finally took it off and I could not make a single sound.

The ultimatum arrived with the scent of expensive incense and the cold stench of defeat.

In the master bedroom of the Sinclair mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles, the air smelled of antiseptic, but it could not drown out the sandalwood burning in a silver tray.

I stood with my back straight, a leather folder pressed against my chest like a shield.

In front of me, my father, Harold Sinclair, the man who built towers with his surname and bought wills with a signature, had been reduced to a shadow among silk sheets.

The heart monitor ticked a slow, terrible rhythm, as if time were counting out loud.

‘Sign the merger, Elena,’ he said, his voice turned to ash. ‘Before dawn.’

‘I can fight in court,’ I replied, cold and precise. ‘I have lawyers in New York, in Chicago, in Los Angeles.’

He let out a dry sound, more like a breaking bone than a laugh.

‘The time for courts has passed. You need a surname and a ring.’ His fingers, surprisingly strong, grabbed my wrist. ‘The federal regulators are waiting for my last breath to freeze every asset. They will say instability. They will say there is no male heir. And what I built, they will devour it.’

I felt the chill of the air conditioning on the back of my neck. This was not a negotiation. It was an execution with a date.

‘I am not an asset in liquidation.’

‘You are my heir,’ his cloudy eyes met mine with desperate lucidity. ‘And heirs do not have the luxury of romance. They have the duty to survive. The Ashford family offered their three sons. They are the only ones old enough to silence the bureaucrats and powerful enough to protect your name. Choose today. Tonight. Or tomorrow you will have no roof, no inheritance, and no surname.’

I swallowed hard.

‘Three?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.

‘Julian, Colton, or Damian.’ My father closed his eyes for a second, exhausted. ‘The peacock, the glutton, or the monster. I do not care which. Just make sure the sun rises tomorrow over the towers that still belong to us.’

The ballroom of The Meridian Grand Hotel, owned by the Sinclairs, shone like an open jewel.

Huge chandeliers