Chapter 1 - The Plunge From the Thirty-Second Floor**
The October wind whipping off Lake Michigan was sharp enough to bite through skin, but the chill Daniel Whitmore felt was entirely internal. Standing just a few feet away on the heated rooftop terrace of Whitmore Tower, he watched with unblinking eyes as his fiancée, Victoria Hale, planted both hands squarely on the chest of senior household staff member Elena Ramirez and pushed. There was no stumble, no accidental trip, and no misunderstanding. It was a deliberate, calculated heave of sheer malice. Elena vanished over the edge of the thirty-two-story skyscraper, while Victoria stood frozen in her dazzling scarlet engagement dress, looking as indifferent as someone dropping a cracked champagne glass onto the marble floor.
For one agonizing second, Daniel’s nervous system locked up completely. Behind him, two hundred of Chicago’s elite socialites and tech investors laughed and drank freely. A string quartet played a soft melody near the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Someone was in the middle of raising a toast to the happy couple. And the woman Daniel was legally bound to marry in six short weeks had just attempted cold-blooded murder.
Daniel’s champagne flute shattered violently against the marble floor, the sharp crystal shards scattering in all directions.
“Elena!”
Heads whipped around in confusion. Daniel sprinted. He slammed through the heavy double doors leading to the rooftop exit with such brutal force that one of them bounced wildly off the interior wall. Victoria spun toward him, her face draining of all color, her lips parting in terror.
“Daniel—”
He didn’t even look back at her. He threw himself at the perimeter railing, leaned over the precipice, and stopped breathing entirely. Three floors below, suspended between heavy industrial steel supports beside a temporary window-washing platform, a heavy-duty yellow safety net sagged heavily under the weight of a human body.
Elena was alive. Barely. But breathing.
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Daniel didn’t hesitate. He vaulted toward the emergency stairwell, plunging downward before anyone on the rooftop could stop him. Behind him, Victoria screamed his name into the cold night wind, but he never turned around. Six weeks before what was supposed to be the grandest celebration of his life, Daniel finally realized he had no idea who Victoria truly was. And as he raced down the stairs to rescue the woman lying broken in the safety net, he was about to discover he knew even less about Elena Ramirez.
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