Their Bet, Her Empire

I was just a cocktail waitress at Velvet Orchid, invisible to the elite swirling around me in Beverly Hills. My days were a blur of polished wood and whispered money, my future as uncertain as ever.

Then Chloe Vanderbilt, a notorious socialite, tried to make me polish her scuffed designer heel. When I refused, her eyes narrowed, promising a reckoning. Soon after, charming heir Ethan Sterling approached me with a proposition: a "different, better life."

It sounded like a dream, but my gut screamed warning. I later overheard them in a private booth.