Erased from His Empire, I Built My Own

Chapter 1

"Keep the heater blasting, if you don't mind. I still can't feel my toes," Serena Vance said, her voice remarkably steady for a woman who had just spent two hours standing on the shoulder of a frozen highway.

The trucker, a burly man named Mac who smelled faintly of stale coffee and diesel, adjusted the dashboard dials. "You're lucky I was making a deadhead run back to the city, lady. Nobody else is stopping in this mess. Not in a blizzard like this."

"I'm aware," Serena replied, staring out the frost-caked windshield. "And I appreciate it. I really do."

She pulled her heavy, borrowed parka tighter around her shoulders. Beneath the rugged canvas coat, she wore a bespoke emerald silk gown—a dress she had designed herself, draped to perfection, intended for the grand ballroom of the Pierre Hotel. Instead, it was currently soaking up melted snow from the rubber floor mats of an eighteen-wheeler.

Her phone buzzed in her palm. It was the seventeenth missed call from her assistant, Marcus. She finally swiped right and lifted it to her ear.

"Serena! Thank God," Marcus's voice crackled through the terrible reception. "Where are you? The gala started an hour ago. The press is asking for Julian, and Julian is asking for you."

"I'm hitchhiking down Interstate 89 in a snowstorm, Marcus," Serena said, her tone pragmatic, devoid of panic. "I won't be doing the red carpet."

"Hitchhiking? What happened to the private car?"

"The driver 'mysteriously' got a flat tire ten miles outside of the Vermont factory," Serena explained, her brilliant mind already assembling the strange, disjointed puzzle pieces of the evening. "And when I finally walked the rest of the way to the supplier, the warehouse was dark. Locked up. The foreman had no idea I was coming. There was no silk-weave crisis, Marcus. The spring line isn't botched."

"What? But Julian said—"

"I know what Julian said," Serena interrupted smoothly. "He said the entire Thorne Luxury spring collection was in jeopardy, and that I was the only one who could fix it. He sent me on a wild goose chase four hours north of Manhattan."

"Why would he do that?" Marcus sounded frantic. "It's the biggest night of the year! We're celebrating the fifth anniversary of Thorne Luxury. Your designs are the centerpiece."

"I don't know yet," Serena murmured, her dark eyes narrowing at the glowing skyline of New York City emerging through the snowy windshield. "But I'm going to find out. I'll be at the venue in twenty minutes. Don't tell anyone I'm coming."

She hung up before Marcus could protest.

Serena Vance was not a woman who panicked. For five years, she had been the invisible architect of Thorne Luxury. While Julian Thorne paraded in front of the cameras, charming the fashion world with his blinding smile and arrogant charisma, Serena was locked in the studio, sketching, draping, and breathing life into the brand. She had built his empire from a struggling boutique label into