Part I: The Shark Tank
The Sterling family’s annual summer engagement party was a sea of old-money, New England arrogance, and I, Anna, was drowning in it. The grand ballroom of their Connecticut estate glittered with a cold, intimidating light, bouncing off heirloom diamonds and crystal champagne flutes, each sparkle a silent judgment against me. I felt impossibly small, a dinghy adrift in an ocean of yachts. My simple linen dress—the nicest thing I owned, purchased on sale after three months of careful saving—looked and felt like a dishrag in a room of bespoke couture. My only accessory, clutched in my nervous, damp hand, was the one thing that truly belonged to me: a tarnished, heavy silver locket my mother had given me on her deathbed. It was my anchor in this alien world.
My fiancé, Alex Sterling, handsome, charming, and at this moment, utterly spineless, was across the room, already absorbed by a circle of his polo-playing friends, their boisterous laughter a world away from my silent anxiety. He had promised to stay by my side, to be my shield. “Don’t worry,” he’d said, “they’ll love you.” But the gravitational pull of his lineage was too strong. I was left to navigate the sharks alone.
