Red Banquet

The night pressed down heavy on the Lu mansion, the air thick and sticky with the weight of an approaching storm. In the three years since Rowena Vale married into this family, all she had gained were the strange perfumes on her husband’s collar and the lies multiplying beside her pillow. The woman in the mirror had red-rimmed eyes, but not from tears—it was hatred simmered into a boil. She was going to destroy the man who had destroyed her, and the sharpest tool at hand was his own flesh and blood. The moment Jasper Merrick pushed open the bedroom door, his striking eyes still laced with sleep, he had no idea he had just stepped into the chess game his stepmother had so carefully laid out.