Mara Sterling: My Deal with Desire
Description
The night that should have crowned Mara Sterling instead destroys her. A single announcement turns love into public humiliation and power into exile. Branded a fraud and hunted by the men who once promised to protect her, she flees through a storm that seems to chase her name. But the crash that should have ended her life delivers her into the hands of someone far more dangerous-an empire built on secrets, led by a man who never believes in coincidence. Between the truth her father died for and the control of those who own the city, Mara must learn whether survival means surrender or starting a war. Because in a world that feeds on betrayal, even fallen girls can bite back.
Chapter 1
Nov 20, 2025
POV Mara
“Please don’t do this to me,” I whisper before I even see him. “Please, Kade. Not tonight. Not like this.”
Poppy’s nails dig crescents into my arm. “Breathe, Mara. You’re shaking.”
“I can’t stop,” I say, mouth dry as paper. “My legs won’t listen.”
The chandeliers above us glitter like a thousand pitying eyes. The Harrington Capital Anniversary Gala hums and clinks and laughs as if the room isn’t a guillotine. Gold-trimmed tables. Champagne towers. Reporters dressed like predators who learned to smile. I’m wearing my mother’s silver silk—the gown from the night my father became the youngest board director. It hangs wrong on me, like it knows I’m an imposter in my mother’s courage.
“Smile, Mara,” Poppy whispers, raising her jeweled clutch to hide her phone. “Everyone’s watching.”
“I don’t want them to,” I say. “I want to go home.”
“You said tonight would fix everything.”
“I say a lot of things when I’m trying not to fall apart.”
We move through a tide of investors and ex-lovers and cameras that breathe. I see him—Kade Harrington—black tux, cut from ice and money. Flanked by men who ruin lives and call it the market. I freeze so hard my heels squeal on marble.
“Keep walking,” Poppy murmurs.
“I can’t.” My voice is thin. “He looks… different.”
He turns. Our eyes catch. Something flickers in his and then shuts—like a door closed softly from the other side.
“Poppy,” I whisper, five years old and lost. “If he takes it back, I don’t know what I am.”
“You’re Mara Sterling.”
“I’m nobody without that seat.”
The lights dim. Laughter snips itself short. People drift toward the stage with champagne like small torches. Kade lifts the mic. His voice slips through the room, low and surgical.
“Ladies and gentlemen… tonight marks fifty years of Harrington Capital. We’ve built skylines, economies, and legacies. And legacy,” he says, sweeping the room, “means responsibility.”
Gentle applause. My heartbeat skitters like a trapped bird.
“And with responsibility,” he goes on, “comes the duty to protect our name from ethical compromise.”
The words hit like ice down my spine. I clutch Poppy’s wrist. “What is he—what is he saying?”
Her smile dies. “I don’t know.”
Kade doesn’t pause. “Effective immediately, Mara Sterling will no longer serve in any capacity within Harrington Capital.”
I hear the sentence with my ears, but my body hears a gunshot. The screen behind him explodes with my photo and one word: DISMISSED. Reporters inhale like a single animal.
“No,” I say, not loudly, not bravely—just a leaking word. “No. Please don’t.”
“Mara,” Poppy says, dragging breath through her teeth. “Don’t look, don’t—”
“Due to ongoing investigations of financial impropriety and breach of internal ethics,” Kade continues, steady as a drip of poison, “we must act. We believe in transparency. Integrity. Accountability.”
“Turn it off,” I say to no one, to everyone. “Please turn it off. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix anything. Just turn it off.”
Cameras surge. Microphones stab the air around my face. “Mara! Did you know?” “Is this an admission?” “Who else is involved?” “Where did the money go?”
“I didn’t— I never— My father—” The room tilts hard left. The floor moves. My stomach climbs into my throat. Poppy tries to pull me back, but my heel catches a cable. I stumble, slam hip-first into a table. Glass shatters around my hands. Pain flashes hot; blood beads bright along my palm.
“Oh my God, she’s bleeding,” someone says, delighted.
“Back off!” Poppy snarls, shoving a camera. It ricochets into the champagne tower. The top plates wobble and collapse—crystal rain, a thousand little knives. People scream. Security surges. The crowd crushes.
“Please,” I gasp, clutching my ruined hand to my chest. “Please stop filming. Please.”
Kade smiles. Calm. Above it all. He raises his left hand and the stage lights catch a diamond ring I have never seen. “To mark this new era,” he says, turning slightly, “one more announcement.”
“No,” I whisper, nausea crawling up my ribs. “No, not that. Not her.”
Sloane Mercer steps into the light like a sharpened secret. Blonde, gleaming, perfect. He takes her hand. The cameras lean in the way wolves lean toward a throat.
“Sloane will not only be joining our family business,” he says, soft like mercy that isn’t, “she’ll be joining my family.”
The ring slides onto her finger. The room detonates in applause.
My knees vanish. Poppy catches me with a gutted sound. “Up, baby. Up. Don’t let them see.”
“I can’t stand,” I sob, a sound so ugly and raw it embarrasses me as it leaves my mouth. “It hurts—everything hurts. Please, Poppy. Take me home.”
Sloane lifts a mic and aims her smile straight at me. “New beginnings, right, Mara?”
Laughter washes over me. Not cruel—worse. Casual. Like I’m a blooper reel. I press my bleeding hand to my stomach and bend, because if I stand straight I’ll scream.
“Security,” someone says. “Clear a path.”
Two guards try to guide me. I flinch. “Don’t touch me,” I beg. “Please don’t touch me. I’ll go, I’ll go. I promise.”
A reporter shoves a mic to my lips. “Did you defraud the company your father helped build?”
“My father—” The words collide and break. “He—he loved this company. I swear— I swear I didn’t—” My chest locks. I can’t pull air. I make a terrible, wheezing sound.
“Panic attack,” Poppy snaps. “Back up!”
They don’t. The cameras keep feeding.
We break free of the ballroom and stagger into the night. Rain slashes down like punishment. My makeup melts into black rivers. My mother’s dress clings, heavy and cold.
“Coat,” Poppy says, wrenching it off and wrapping me. “Hold pressure on your hand.”
“It was supposed to be beautiful,” I whisper. “He told me—he told me I was the only thing that felt real.”
“Then he’s a liar.”
“I’m so stupid.” I choke on the word. “I believed him. I believed him over everyone. Over you.”
Poppy cups my face with shaking hands. “Stop. Look at me. We go home, we hide, we rest. Tomorrow we figure out lawyers—”
“Home?” I laugh, then gag. “They took our home when Dad died. We don’t have— We don’t have anything.”
Lightning rakes the skyline. Harrington Capital glows behind the rain like a holy thing that eats its saints. I turn back toward the doors like a moth that can’t understand fire.
“Don’t,” Poppy pleads. “Mara, don’t go back in there.”
“I just…” I cover my mouth with my bloody fingers. “I need him to look at me and say it. To my face. I need him to say I’m nothing.”
“You’re not—”
“I am.” The confession spills out, hot and humiliating. “Without that seat, without my father, without—without him—I am nothing.”
A limo idles at the curb. Laughter leaks from the revolving doors. I hear Sloane’s voice—bright, victorious. I hear Kade’s lower reply. I sway like someone cut my strings.
“Do you know what he said last month?” I ask.
Poppy shakes her head, eyes blown wide.
“‘Your father’s mistakes don’t define you, Mara. You can build something new.’” The memory collapses in my throat. “And then he—he did this. In front of everyone. He chose… her. He chose all of them.”
Poppy’s mascara has bled, too. “You can’t fight him like this.”
“I can’t fight at all,” I whisper. “I don’t even know how to stand.”
A horn barks. Somewhere, a bottle breaks. The rain thickens until the street is a mirror I can’t bear to look into. My reflection wavers—crooked mouth, smeared eyes, a girl in her mother’s dress who walked into a gala and drowned.
“Help me,” I say to Poppy, to the rain, to the building, to the man who won’t look at me. “Please. Someone help me.”
She pulls me in. I fold, small as I can make myself. The city roars around us, indifferent. I press my forehead to Poppy’s shoulder, and the last of my voice—thin and bruised—falls out into the storm.
“Tell him I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Tell him I’ll disappear if he wants. Just… don’t let him do it like this again.”
Mara Sterling: My Deal with Desire
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