1. Vivienne

1

VIVIENNE

V ivienne Blackwood hated Christmas.

The thought crystallized in her mind as clearly as the frost creeping across her windshield, despite the luxury SUV’s best efforts to keep it at bay. Snow fell faster now, fat flakes swirling in her headlights like moths drawn to flame, and the GPS signal flickered ominously, the screen stuttering between navigation and static. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, her manicured nails biting into the leather-wrapped rim.

In another hour, she would be safely settled in the most exclusive suite at the Silver Pine Resort, curled up in front of a designer fireplace with an obscenely expensive bottle of wine. Alone. Determinedly not thinking about what had happened exactly one year ago today.

Her car’s Bluetooth chimed, interrupting the tense silence. Her assistant’s voice crackled through the speakers, fighting against the growing interference.

“Ms. Blackwood? The resort called. They’re concerned about the weather conditions.”

Vivienne rolled her eyes, though no one was there to see. “I don’t care if it’s the fucking apocalypse, Sophie. I booked that suite months ago specifically to be alone, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

“But they’re saying—” Sophie’s voice dissolved into static, and Vivienne sighed heavily as silence swallowed the line.

Perfect. Just perfect.

The first few snowflakes had seemed almost whimsical when she left Denver, a delicate curtain draped over the jagged peaks of the Rockies. Now, the storm pressed in around her rented Range Rover like a living thing. Vast, hungry, relentless.

Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, as if the storm might have gained sentience and chosen her as its next victim. The heated leather seats and the purring hum of the engine felt suddenly flimsy, an inadequate defense against nature’s fury.

“Blackwood women don’t panic, darling. We assess and adapt.”

Her mother’s voice drifted uninvited into her thoughts, the echo of lessons drilled into her since childhood. But what use was calm reasoning now?

The memory of last Christmas slid through her defenses, sharp and unwelcome. She’d come home early from a board meeting, clutching a tiny velvet box and brimming with excitement.

The house had been perfect. Stockings hung with precise symmetry over the marble fireplace. A twelve-foot tree in the foyer of their beautiful home, decorated in carefully curated ornaments. A holiday playlist humming softly in the background.

And then Chloe, her beloved, tangled in their very expensive sheets mid 69 with her personal trainer.

Vivienne blinked hard, the memory dissolving like smoke. She refocused on the road, which had narrowed to a pale, winding ribbon between snow-packed pines. The windshield wipers flailed, struggling to keep up, while the Range Rover’s tires gripped the icy surface with increasing uncertainty.

Her GPS screen flickered once more then went dark.

“No, no, no,” Vivienne muttered, jabbing at the touchscreen. “Don’t you dare.”

The hot air blasting from the vents barely touched the chill spreading through her body. A shiver ran down her spine, and her pulse quickened. She was Vivienne Blackwood. CEO of Vivid Black, a multi-million-dollar fashion empire. She did not get lost in snowstorms. She did not lose control.

The engine coughed.

“Don’t you even think about it,” she warned, her voice sharp as a whip. But the Range Rover shuddered violently, a death rattle shaking through the chassis. The dashboard lit up like Christmas morning—except these weren’t gifts. They were warnings .

The engine died with a final, pitiful sigh.

The silence that followed seemed to mock her. For a long moment, Vivienne just sat there, gripping the wheel like it was a lifeline. Outside, the snow continued to fall, relentless and indifferent. The road had vanished entirely beneath the mounting drifts, and the dense forest loomed on either side like silent sentinels.

She exhaled shakily and glanced at her phone. No bars. Of course not. She had chosen this mountain escape precisely for its isolation, hadn’t she? To leave behind the bustling chaos of New York, the endless swirl of parties and obligations, the constant reminders of how spectacularly her life had derailed.

The SUV’s interior was growing colder by the second. Her breath frosted in the air, forming little puffs of vapor that dissipated quickly. She was wearing a cashmere sweater dress tailored to perfection and boots that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. Beautiful. Impractical. Useless against the cold.

Assess and adapt.

The glove compartment held an emergency flashlight, its batteries mercifully still functional, and a road flare. She rummaged through the trunk next, shoving aside designer luggage to find a space blanket and a first-aid kit. No extra layers. No gloves. No food.

What the hell had she been thinking?

Her heart thudded heavily, the sound magnified by the oppressive silence. The storm seemed to absorb every noise, leaving only the eerie hiss of falling snow.

The visibility through the windshield was almost nonexistent now, the swirling white obliterating any sense of direction, not that she knew where she was anyway. The mountains loomed unseen but ever-present, their isolation pressing against her like an invisible hand. She squinted into the snowstorm, trying to find some semblance of a landmark—a tree, a rock formation, anything—but the world beyond the car was nothing but an endless curtain of white.

The silence grew heavier. Snow muffled everything, even the soft creaks of the cooling engine. It was as though she had been dropped into a void, a cold, unfeeling void where time ceased to matter .

A sudden gust of wind howled through the trees, shaking the SUV slightly, and Vivienne jumped. She clutched the flashlight tighter, her pulse thrumming in her ears.

Panic edged into her thoughts. What if no one found her? The storm was too fierce, the roads too treacherous. No one would think to look for her this high up the mountain.

Not tonight. Not in this.

She tried the ignition one more time, out of desperation rather than hope. The Range Rover sputtered weakly, its engine refusing to turn over.

Her throat tightened. She pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, trying to summon the composure that had seen her through boardroom battles and PR crises. But this was different. This was primal. The storm didn’t care about her success, her power, or her carefully maintained image.

She looked out the window again, watching the snow pile higher against the door. A few hours ago, the cabin of the SUV had felt like a fortress, a shield against the elements. Now, it felt like a coffin.

Time passed in an indistinct blur. Minutes? Hours? She had no idea. And worse, the storm’s fury showed no signs of easing up. Her phone was a dead weight in her lap, its screen stubbornly displaying ‘No Service.’

Options dwindled with each passing minute, each fresh wave of snow. She needed to do something, anything, before the storm buried her completely.

She forced herself to think rationally, to remember the survival articles she had skimmed in glossy magazines while waiting for her spa appointments. Stay in the car, they had always advised. Conserve body heat. Don’t wander into the wilderness.

But how long could she wait?

Her stomach growled, a sharp reminder of the dinner she had skipped in her rush to leave Denver. The silence inside the SUV was deafening now, broken only by the faint creak of the frame as the wind pressed against it.

She switched on the flashlight and scanned the interior, as though something useful might miraculously appear. The beam of light caught on the space blanket she had found in the trunk, crumpled on the passenger seat. She spread it over herself, the material crinkling loudly in the stillness.

It wasn’t enough. The cold seeped into her, bone-deep and unforgiving. Her thoughts drifted to the headlines that would follow this disaster: “Fashion Mogul Freezes to Death in Mountain Storm,” “Tragic End for Vivienne Blackwood.”

Her chest tightened again, this time not from the cold. The weight of her loneliness settled heavily over her, more cruel than the storm outside.

A distant noise startled her—a low rumble, barely audible over the wind. Her heart leapt. Was it a plow? Another car? Rescue?

She strained her ears, but the sound faded almost as quickly as it had come, leaving her once again in silence.

Her hands trembled as she adjusted the flashlight, the beam catching on the ice-coated windshield. For the first time, tears pricked her eyes, hot and unwelcome.

“Blackwood women don’t panic,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “We assess and adapt.”

But as the hours stretched on and the storm howled louder, even that mantra began to lose its power.

The silence pressed in, growing heavier with every passing second. Vivienne flicked the flashlight off and leaned her head against the steering wheel, staring into the inky blackness of the storm. She’d always hated silence—true, suffocating silence. At least in the city, even during the loneliest moments, there was noise. Horns honking, distant music, voices filtering through thin apartment walls.

But here in the Rockies, the quiet wasn’t comforting. It wasn’t peaceful. It was hostile, a void so absolute it made her feel as though she’d been erased from existence.

She dug her nails into her palm, forcing her thoughts back to something tangible, something actionable. The storm would end eventually. It had to.

Her gaze drifted to the dashboard clock, its glowing numbers marking time in a way that felt almost mocking. Ten minutes had passed since the engine failed. Ten minutes that stretched like hours. The cold crept in, persistent and insidious, wrapping itself around her legs and shoulders no matter how tightly she tucked the space blanket underneath her.

She flicked the flashlight back on and rummaged through the car’s compartments again, more frantic this time. The meager emergency supplies taunted her. There was no way she could survive out here overnight, not with just a thin blanket and a flare.

“Think,” she whispered aloud, her voice shaky from both fear and chill. “Think, Vivienne.”

Her mind churned through options, rejecting them as quickly as they formed. She could try to hike back toward the nearest town, but in this storm, she’d be lucky to take ten steps before getting hopelessly lost. She could sit tight and wait for someone to find her, but who even knew she was here? Sophie’s call had dropped before she’d explained where she was.

Her breath hitched.

For the first time, the thought occurred to her in sharp, painful clarity: no one was coming.

The flashlight beam wavered as her hand shook. The snow outside was already halfway up the doors. In an hour, maybe two, she’d be completely buried. The SUV’s sturdy frame might hold, but it wouldn’t save her from the cold.

She squeezed her eyes shut and let out a shaky exhale, trying to shove the panic back into the box where it belonged. Panic wouldn’t help. Logic would. She needed a plan.

The SUV had to have some feature she’d overlooked, something meant for situations like this. She tapped the dashboard, cycling through the menus, but every screen displayed the same taunting message: System Offline.

Frustrated, she shoved open the center console and froze. Beneath a stack of receipts and loose change was an unopened granola bar.

Relief flooded her chest, even as she realized how absurd it was to feel hopeful over something so small. She tore the wrapper open and bit into it, the taste of oats and honey grounding her for a moment. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

The act of eating seemed to remind her body just how much it was lacking. Her stomach growled louder, and a faint headache throbbed at her temples. She hadn’t eaten since lunch—a rushed salad scarfed down between back-to-back meetings before she had left the city.

“I’ve survived worse,” she said aloud, as if hearing her own voice might convince her it was true.

But had she? Had she really ever been this alone, this vulnerable?

Her gaze flicked to her phone again, though she knew better than to expect a miracle. The expensive device was nothing more than a paperweight now, its screen stubbornly refusing to light up with bars or messages. She turned it off to conserve battery, just in case, and tucked it back into her bag.

The wind howled, rattling the SUV. Vivienne flinched instinctively, her eyes darting to the window. The snow was falling harder now, each gust sending it swirling like waves crashing against the car.

Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind again: “Blackwood women don’t panic, darling.”

“Well, maybe they should,” Vivienne muttered bitterly, her voice barely louder than the storm.

She shifted in her seat, pulling the space blanket tighter around her shoulders. The material crinkled loudly, breaking the deafening silence inside the car. She hated the sound of it, hated how cheap and flimsy it felt. A billionaire socialite reduced to sitting under a scrap of tin foil, freezing in a dead car on the side of a mountain.

Her thoughts turned to Chloe again. Chloe, who had laughed in her face when she’d confronted her about the affair with the personal trainer. Chloe, who had called her “cold” and “controlling,” as if that somehow justified fucking the paid help.

“You are impossible to love, Viv,” Chloe had said, the words cutting as sharp now as they had a year ago.

Vivienne clenched her jaw, shoving the memory away. It didn’t matter. Chloe didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to die out here thinking about her ex.

Her fingers brushed the road flare in the passenger seat, and an idea sparked. If she couldn’t rely on the SUV’s lights or horn to signal for help, maybe the flare could attract attention. Someone—anyone—might see it and come .

She pulled on her boots, wincing as the cold leather met her bare legs, and wrapped the blanket around herself like a shawl. The icy metal of the door handle stung her palm as she gripped it, and she hesitated for a moment.

The storm outside roared, a wall of white and wind that seemed determined to swallow her whole.

She shoved the door open and stepped out.

The wind hit her like a physical force, stealing her breath and sending the blanket whipping behind her. Snow clung to her lashes and hair, blinding her as she stumbled forward, clutching the flare like a lifeline.

Her boots sank into the drifts, the cold seeping through the soles almost instantly. She fumbled with the flare’s cap, her numb fingers struggling against the tiny plastic ridges.

Finally, with a snap and a hiss, the flare came to life, its red light cutting through the storm like a beacon. Vivienne held it high, waving it back and forth, her teeth chattering violently.

“Help!” she shouted, though her voice was lost almost immediately in the wind.

She stood there for what felt like an eternity, her arm aching from holding the flare so high. The snow continued to fall, relentless, covering the SUV’s roof now. The glow of the flare illuminated the storm in eerie, flickering shades of crimson, but it revealed no movement, no signs of life.

Her hope faltered, then broke entirely. She let the flare drop into the snow, where it sizzled weakly before fading.

The world went dark again, the storm swallowing her completely.

Shivering uncontrollably, Vivienne clawed her way back to the SUV, her muscles burning with every step. By the time she collapsed into the driver’s seat, her body felt like ice, and her breathing was ragged.

She pulled the door shut behind her, but the cold had already invaded the vehicle and her body, settling into her bones. The blanket offered little comfort now, no matter how tightly she wrapped it around herself.

Tears welled up in her eyes again. For the first time, she let herself feel the weight of it— the helplessness; the fear; the awful, crushing loneliness.

No one was coming.

She rested her forehead against the steering wheel, her breath forming tiny clouds that lingered in the frigid air. The silence crept back in, pressing down on her chest like a heavy weight.