Alishba7889
Emma Sinclair spent her childhood in the servant quarters of the Ashworth mansion, dodging the sharp tongue and sharper pranks of the one boy she couldn't stand, Nathaniel Ashworth.
He's the heir to everything, spoiled rotten, and entirely too pleased with himself. The day she left for studies as a teenager, she promised herself she'd never look back.
Years later, she's back for term break and guard fully up, only to find her old tormentor waiting at the door with a smile that doesn't match a single memory she has of him.
Nathaniel is different. Attentive. Charming. Relentlessly, suspiciously kind. He remembers things she never told him and shows up where she happens to be.
But the charm is a strategy.
Staff have been disappearing from the Ashworth estate, one by one, and Nathaniel has a suspect his parents refuse to even consider: Emma's own mother, their beloved head chef of over a decade. He has no proof, no allies, and no way to investigate a woman his family treats like part of the family, except through her daughter. So the boy who once tormented Emma for sport now sets out to charm her instead, certain that if he gets close enough, she'll let something slip that gives him the evidence he needs.
There's just one problem: Emma knows. As a psychologist in training, reading people is her job, and Nathaniel's charm doesn't add up.
She also knows, with certainty, that her mother is innocent. So, instead of running, Emma stays close, racing to find the real culprit before Nathaniel's suspicion becomes an accusation her mother can't survive.
Neither of them counted on how complicated it would get once the act stops feeling like an act, or on what happens when the boy trying to expose her mother becomes the one person Emma needs to help her prove he's wrong.