The one he swore when he walked away ten years ago.
He’s brought this last Kane to her knees.
2
VASSO
She tastes like revenge and addiction and regret.
And I haven’t even kissed her again yet.
Naomi Kane stares up at me with those firestorm eyes, the same ones that haunt me for a decade. The same eyes that belong to the girl I never should touch and definitely shouldn’t want.
But now she isn’t a girl.
She’s a breathtakingly beautiful woman.
Just as she was at eighteen, now at twenty-eight, every inch of her looks like temptation with a memory I can’t scrub out of my soul.
She stares down at the three-million-dollar ring and her breath hitches. She doesn’t realize she does it. But I do.
Naomi is always easy to read if you know where to look.
I watch her try to school her features, try to hold on to the last sliver of dignity that Kane name can buy her. The same name that once barred me from the front door of the estate I now own.
The same name that reduces my mother to “staff” and me to nothing more than a shadow tracking mud through the halls.
I spent years building myself from the ground up, cutting deals before I turn twenty, acquiring tech companies and infrastructure firms and, eventually, every inch of Dillinger Island, including this decaying monument to Kane pride belongs to Dillinger Industries.
I don’t need their name anymore. I own what they leave behind.
“This is happening, Naomi. You made a choice,” I say. “Just like I did when your father ruined mine. Only difference is, I don’t pretend to be the victim.”
“I didn’t know,” she says, softer now. “Not until it was too late. I still don’t know all of it.”
Her voice is almost pleading. Almost guilt-ridden.
Almost enough to make me hesitate.
Almost.
I step forward. “Then consider this your chance to make amends.”
“You gave me your word,” she says. “Six months. No interference. No press. In exchange, you agreed to the engagement.”
“And I keep that word.” I pull the folded document from my coat pocket, the marriage license already filled in with both our names. “But the clock has run out.”
She flinches again. Good.
I turn slightly, hearing the old man’s shuffling footsteps fade down the hall. He is innocent in this. A casualty of bloodlines and power plays.
But Naomi? Naomi is collateral I’m willing to use. Because her father wasn’t the only culprit in our stained history.
I take a step closer. “You want to protect him?” I say, nodding toward the corridor. “Then sign the papers. Become Mrs. Dillinger. On paper. In public. That’s all I’m asking.”
“That’s all?” She bites the words off, chin high. “Just sacrifice the last thing I have left. My name.”
I lean in, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Sweetheart, you gave me your name the second you put it next to mine in that newspaper.”
