Chapter 1

Three Days Earlier…

The postcard in my hand matched the view out the jet’s window. Prague at dawn. Centuries of history was silhouetted against a hazy-gold sky, the dark, swirling clouds above the city a deep purple gray.

Jameson had sent me the postcard, a callback to the way his uncle had once sent postcards to my mother. The parallel made me think about what my mom would say if she could see me now: the private plane, the inches-thick stack of documents I’d gone through on the flight, the way I still caught myself holding my breath when the reality of moments like this once hit me with the force of a tidal wave.

Prague at dawn. My mom and I had always talked about traveling the world. It was the one dream I’d allowed myself to hold on to after she’d died, but at fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, I had never let myself daydream for more than a few minutes at a time. I had never let myself want this—or anything—too much.

But now? I ran my thumb over the edge of the postcard. Now I wanted the world. I wanted everything. And there was nothing standing in my way.

“One of these days, you’ll get used to it,” the person sitting across from me on my private jet said, then she laid three magazines down on the table between us. My face was on the cover of every single one.

“No,” I told Alisa simply. “I won’t.” I couldn’t read any of the words on the covers. I wasn’t even sure what language two of the three were in.

“They’re calling you Saint Avery.” Alisa arched a brow at me. “Care to guess what they’re calling Jameson?”

Alisa Ortega was my lawyer—and the foundation’s—but her expertise went well beyond legal advice. If something needed fixing, she fixed it. At this point, our roles were clearly defined. I was the teenage billionaire heiress philanthropist. She put out the fires.

And Jameson Hawthorne blazed.

“Guess,” Alisa reiterated, as the jet touched down, “what they’re calling him.”

I knew exactly where this was going, but I wasn’t a saint, and Jameson wasn’t a liability. We were two sides of the same coin.

“Are they calling him Don’t Stop?” I asked Alisa seriously.

Her perfectly sculpted brows pulled together.

“Sorry,” I said in a completely deadpan. “I forgot. That’s what I call him.”

Alisa snorted. “It is not.”

A borderline Hawthorne grin pulled at the edges of my lips, and I looked out the window again. In the distance, I could still see the spires disappearing into the gold-purple-gray sky.

Alisa was wrong. I would never get used to this. This was everything—and so was Jameson Hawthorne.

“I’m not Saint Avery,” I told Alisa. “You know that.”

I’d kept enough of my inheritance that I would literally never be able to spend even a noticeable fraction of it, but all most people saw was the amount I’d given away. By popular opinion, I was either a paragon of virtue or about as intelligent as a sack of rocks.

“You may not be a saint,” Alisa told me. “But you are discreet.”

“And Jameson is… not,” I said. If Alisa noticed the way my lips ticked upward just saying his name, she chose to ignore it.

“He’s a Hawthorne. Discreet is not in their vocabulary.” Alisa had her own history with the Hawthorne family. “The foundation’s work is gaining steam. We don’t need a scandal right now. When you see Jameson, you tell him: No puppies this time. No breaking and entering. No rooftops. No dares. Don’t let him drink anything that glows. Call me if he so much as mentions leather pants. And remember—”

“I’m not Cinderella anymore,” I finished. “I’m writing my own story now.”

At seventeen, when my life had changed forever, I’d been the lucky girl from the wrong side of the tracks, plucked from obscurity and given the world at the whim of an eccentric billionaire. But now? I was the eccentric billionaire.

I’d come into my own. And the world was watching.

Saint Avery. I shook my head at the thought. Whoever had come up with that moniker clearly didn’t realize that the biggest difference between Jameson and me, when it came to dares and games and the thrill of the moment, was that I was better at not getting caught.

Within minutes, the plane was ready for us to deboard—security first, then Alisa, then me. The instant I had both feet on the ground, I got a text from Jameson. I doubted the timing was a coincidence.

Very few things with Jameson were.

I read his text, and a surge of energy and awe, reminiscent of what I’d felt when I’d looked out the window at the ancient city below, came rushing back. A slow smile spread over my face.

Two sentences. That was all it took for Jameson Hawthorne to make my heart start beating a little harder, a little faster.

Welcome to the City of a Hundred Spires, Heiress. Feel like a game of Hide and Seek?