I sit at the head of the table, my thoughts twisting in tendrils too insubstantial to do anything but torture me.

The directors drone on around me. I hold my breath every time the chairperson's voice rises above theirs, only releasing it when she mentions something other than the CEO position.

I can't focus on anything but the phone on my lap. I glance down at it whenever the screen lights up, my heart hitching in case it's a message from Orion.

No news is good news, right? That's what I tell myself after checking my phone for the millionth time.

The boardroom door opens, distracting me from my internal agony for a moment before plunging me into horror as a man twice Orion's size shoves him into the room while bracing his arms behind his back.

My stomach lurches.

No.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

The director halts his feedback from the sales department as all eyes in the room turn to the spectacle. Six gigantic men enter behind Orion, dispersing to reveal a woman at the centre of their formation, holding them together as a magnet would scraps of metal.

Her eyes fall on me. Her smile is a frost that kisses my flesh, turning me ice-cold.

I stand, staying behind the table so Snow can't see my knees shake.

I faced more formidable threats those nights I went home to the Bronx after a late shift. A spoilt brat doesn't scare me.

"What's the meaning of this?" My voice rings through the room, as commanding as ever.

Show no fear.

"Maybe you can answer that, stepmother." Snow holds out the lip gloss with the apple-shaped lid.

My mouth goes dry.

"Why was your bodyguard leaving the restaurant right after I found this in my purse?" asks Snow.

The lie rolls easily off my tongue. "I asked him to get me a bagel."

It isn't unrealistic for me to send my bodyguard on errands, after all.

Snow raises her eyebrows. "Divine doesn't make bagels."

Dammit. How could I have forgotten that?

I fumble for a recovery. "He must've walked into the wrong restaurant by mistake."

Snow's smile tells me that she knows. She knows me better than anyone in this room; well enough to tell when my feathers are ruffled.

I straighten my spine. I will not let a child intimidate me into forfeiting my empire. I would make her look ridiculous first.

"Why are you making a big deal of this? It's just lip gloss."

Snow isn't dead, which means she doesn't know what the lip gloss can do.

"No, it's not." Her eyes flash. "Tatiana died after using it!"

I remember Tatiana's easy smile. She and Snow shared everything since they were children, even lip gloss. My throat tightens.

She's dead because of me.

I never meant for that to happen, but I can't let my guilt undo me if I want to protect Skin Deep.

"I'm sorry about Tatiana." Despite my rising fear, I shrug. "Maybe it was food poisoning or an aneurysm. It's preposterous to think that a lip gloss can kill you."

The directors nod in agreement, a hopeful sign. Maybe I can convince them to believe me over Snow.

Snow glares like a petulant child despite being in her twenties. "Preposterous, is it? Why don't you try this on then, stepmother?" She offers me the lip gloss.

The set of her mouth tells me that it's not a suggestion but a command.

I feel myself go pale. One swipe can kill, Cassandra said. Tatiana is proof of that.

I fight to keep my voice even as I snatch up another excuse. "I only use Skin Deep products."

"I thought you might say that." Snow gives a light laugh. "Luckily I came with a guinea pig."

My chest constricts as Snow opens the lip gloss and turns to Orion.

He resists as her bodyguard grabs his face so he can't turn away, but he's no match for the giant's strength. Though fear darkens his eyes, he doesn't utter a word, not to confess or beg. When the lip gloss wand is millimetres from Orion's mouth, I know Snow isn't bluffing.

She will kill him to prove a point, but I won't let him die for me.

"Stop!"

Snow closes the lip gloss, a smile splitting her red lips. To stop the situation from spiralling into disaster, I speak before she does.

"The lip gloss may be poisoned, but you can't prove that Orion put it in your purse or that I had anything to do with it."

The directors mutter among themselves. I catch the hesitance of their words, the way their eyes flit between me and Snow. Even if I can explain my way out of this, they'll never trust me again. The damage is done.

"You want proof?"

Snow holds her phone up as she scrolls through photos of Orion outside my penthouse, starting with the first time I invited him for dinner almost a year ago and ending at our date last week. It's clear that he's leaning into me and my arms are around his neck. Even my best lie couldn't deny that we're kissing.

My cheeks burn.

"You've been involved with this bodyguard for months. Maybe even before my father died." Snow's voice is a scalpel, cutting me where it hurts most.

The directors' murmurs tear at my wounds.

"That's not true!" I shake my head in desperate protest. "I would've never betrayed your father."

Snow's eyes harden. "Is that what was going through your mind when you tried to have his daughter killed?"

She taps her screen. My voice plays out of her phone as clearly as if I was speaking in person.

"I can't assume the board will agree with you," I hear myself say. "They're meeting this afternoon. The only way to guarantee that Snow won't overthrow me is to remove her."

Snow lets the damning conversation play until Orion says, "I'll make this right. For you."

I'd do anything to return to that hopeful moment, before everything was unravelling in front of me.

I tilt my chin up, fighting the sickening wave that passes over me. As long as I don't confess to anything, all is not lost.

I turn the spotlight back on Snow. "You had surveillance cameras installed near my penthouse and bugged my office?"

She shrugs. "What else was I supposed to do?"

I grind my teeth. "That's illegal."

"So's murder." Snow sneers, knowing her accusation trumps mine. "I knew from the day Daddy brought you home that you were nothing more than a parasite. Now that he's gone, I must look out for myself."

I narrow my eyes. "Your evidence won't stand up in court."

Snow scoffs, crossing her arms. "Why do I need the court when I have the Board of Directors?"

As if on cue, mumbles run through the room. Every set of eyes that meets mine burns with a fierce hostility.

Murderer. The cliché evil stepmother. That's what they see when they look at me, a jealous hag trying to tear down her younger, more beautiful stepdaughter.

I suppose I should blame myself for that. I spent years erasing the girl I used to be so that nothing of her remains within me, but now there's nothing to pity me for.

Better people should hate me for who I have become. I wouldn't want to be the poor, needy nobody from the Bronx, not even for their sympathy.

The chairperson of the board clears her throat. "Security, escort Mrs Wight and her accomplice out."

I struggle against Snow's bodyguard's grasp, but my resistance is as effective as clear mascara on blonde eyelashes.

"Give her to the cops. I don't want her anywhere near my company." Snow's lip curls. "I'll see her rot in prison for killing my best friend."

I slip out of the bodyguard's grip only for another man to grab me from behind. "You can't do this!"

"You're a murderer, Jacintha. The law is on my side." Snow lays a cold hand on my cheek as her bodyguard forces me to stop in front of her. "But it won't be too bad. You'll have your boy-toy to keep you company." She tilts her head, smirking. "Let's see if he still likes you when jail hollows out your pretty face."

Some say Snow is as striking as a sculpture of a Greek goddess, but when I look at her, I only see a vampire—bloodless herself but with a taste for the blood of others. Even her lips are like blood.

I don't remember the shade's name, but I know what I'd call the colour that sears itself into my memory.

'Deadly Like Snow'.

I know she has won.

Despite the cry that threatens to tear from my chest, I hold my head high. "This isn't over, Snow. Skin Deep is mine, and I won't stop fighting for it."

Rolling her eyes, Snow waves her hand in dismissal.

Her bodyguards drag me and Orion out of the boardroom. The overhead lights illuminate the corridor as they always do, but everything is different.

Because none of this is mine. Not anymore.

"Jaci... I'm sorry," says Orion.

I close my eyes to keep back my tears. "No, I'm sorry. This is my fault."

I should've gone after Snow alone so that Orion wouldn't have to pay too. He didn't deserve to wither away in jail when the only thing he did wrong was care for me.

This would have been a mere battle if Snow died like she was supposed to. Instead, she survived and turned my plan around to ruin me. She made this into a war, one that would endure as long as I wanted it to.

We pass two cleaners standing wide-eyed, obviously eavesdropping on the most interesting board meeting ever to take place in Wight Tower.

They stare at me like I'm an animal from some exotic land.

My dark hair has slipped out of my iconic chignon, falling over my shoulders instead. Snow's bodyguard must've smudged my lipstick when he grabbed me. I'm sure my makeup runs down from my eyes like black rivers fed by tears.

I probably don't look like Jacintha Wight, CEO of Skin Deep. If I looked into a mirror, I'm sure I'd see the girl who worked as a cleaner in Alistair Wight's stationery company.

"You know what they say about beauty," says one of the cleaners, her eyes following me as Snow's bodyguard pushes me past her.

"Oh yeah." The other leans on her broom. "It's only skin deep."

If only they knew how true that was; that a viper hiding behind her human beauty has taken control of my company.

I feel it then, a chill as if someone is walking over my grave.

Snow has taken my place at the head of the table in the boardroom.