“Have the contracts delivered to the Ashworth estate. And Julian… give me some time.”
Time. She was always asking me for something. I’d agreed.
Through clenched teeth, I’d agreed. Because I’d always give her what she wanted—within reason, and sometimes not even then. And if I hadn’t, what was the alternative? Chasing her down like the obsessed man I was? Showing up at her door, dragging her back, proving everything she feared about me was true?
No. I told myself I’d be what she needed—patient, giving, civilized. But all those were a thin veneer that cracked a little more every day she didn’t come home.
As if time did anything but peel the flesh from bone.
I tried to work. I tried to sleep. I tried to pretend the ache gnawing through me was manageable. On the fourteenth day, something snapped.
I called her. It rang. Then again. Then I hit her voicemail—the same recording I’d listened to a hundred times just to hear her say her own name. The beep was the match to the gasoline in my veins.
“Elara.” My voice was low, a warning even to my own ears. “This is it. My patience isn’t just thin now—it’s fucking gone. You want to be left alone? Fine. But you don’t get to vanish. You come back. You come back here, and you look me in the eye, and we talk. Do you hear me?”
I paced, the phone a hot brick against my ear.
“You have twenty-four hours. Or I’m coming to find you. And don’t think I don’t know where you are. The car has GPS, sweetheart. You’ve been in a boutique hotel in Georgetown for twelve days. Don’t make me fly to D.C. and drag you out of there.”
I ended the call and threw the phone. It hit the floor-to-ceiling window with a violent, satisfying crack—the glass spider-webbed, but held. A fitting metaphor for my sanity.
The rage didn’t subside. It altered. It became kinetic. I tore through the living room. A crystal vase meant for her orchids exploded against the marble fireplace. A stack of art books I’d bought because she liked the covers became a scattered avalanche across the floor.
The sounds ripping from my throat didn’t belong to a civilized man—they were guttural, broken things, part roar, part sob. This was the truth she was so afraid of. Not the calculated violence in a study—but this. Raw, uncontained devastation. The beast with no cage.
I ended up on my knees in the wreckage, the tears finally coming—hot, shameful. They weren’t sadness; they were furious helplessness. I could buy companies. Break rivals. Levelempires. But I couldn’t make the one person I needed pick up the damn phone.
If silence was her weapon, then I would answer with one of my own. I couldn’t hurt her. But I could ruin the world that ruined us.
The Ashworths—the reason she was gone. And Seraphine—for every man she’d harmed.
I found my work phone in my jacket. My hands shook as I pulled up Quinn’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Sir.”
“Release it,” I said, my voice scraped hollow from shouting and crying. “All of it. Every dirty secret. The Zurich footage. The hotel logs. The bank statements showing Alistair funneling company funds to his mistress. The medical reports on old man Ashworth they’ve been hiding from investors. The sourced story about Seraphine’s ‘resignation.’ All of it. To every outlet, blogger, and board member. No phased rollout. A flood. I want them drowning in it by tomorrow morning.”
There was a beat of silence. “Sir,” Quinn said quietly, “that was the nuclear option. Are you sure?”
“Damn right I’m sure.”
“Understood,” he replied.
I felt myself smile, but there was no happiness in it. Only vacancy. Only vengeance.
“If I’m not pleased,” I murmured, “they shouldn’t be either.”
I ended the call. I sat back in the ruins of my living room, morning light glinting off the broken glass.
She thought I was a monster? Fine. I'd be one.
Chapter 41
Washington, D.C. — Six Months After Leaving
Elara
I’d been gone six months. I had good days. Today wasn’t one of them.
