She didn’t realize the only reason I ever behaved was because she asked me to. Because she needed me soft. I loved her enough to pretend I wasn’t capable of destroying everything she touched just to keep her.
No more. Now, all of my restraint was gone.
I pulled the folder toward me with clumsy fingers.
“You’re shaking,” Quinn noted.
“Shut up,” I muttered.
I opened the file. Her pretty brown face stared back up at me—glamorous, icy, immaculate. Elara Vance at twenty-four. Twenty-seven. Thirty. Perfect in every goddamn picture. A woman who’d been sculpted. A woman who’d been claimed.
There were photos of her husband, too—Alastair Ashworth, looking smug beside her. In every photo, he wasn’t even touching her. Not really. His hand hovered near hers like he didn’t understand he was supposed to hold it. He didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.
I flipped the page. Adoption records. Articles about her parents’ deaths. Statements from the Ashworth family about taking her in. Photos of a small, awkward teenage Elara standing beside a young Alastair, who scowled like someone had stolen his house.
She had told me pieces of this once while she was drunk and naked, her head on my chest after a long night. But reading it was different. Seeing it was different.
“Her adoptive parents treated her well,” Quinn said, clearing his throat. “There’s no evidence of mistreatment.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah? They treated her well all the way into an arranged marriage with their inept, waste-of-a-son?”
Quinn looked down at his shoes. My breath hitched. Rage surged through me like a second heartbeat.
“She was thirteen,” I said quietly. “Thirteen when they took her in. And at eighteen, they put her into the family business. She graduated college in two years with a Bachelor's in Business. At twenty-five, they married her off to their useless son. She told me he’d left the same night they married—on a European honeymoon by himself.”
“She agreed to it,” Quinn offered.
“No,” I snapped. “She complied. That’s not the same thing.”
Quinn went silent. I kept flipping. Photos of charity galas. Business reports. Statements praising Elara’s ‘loyalty to the Ashworth name.’ A clip from a magazine calling herThe Perfect Heir-in-Law.
My hands trembled. My chest tightened. The world spinning. She was bound to these people. She told me that much. But from what I saw, they hadn’t just trapped her—they had built a cage and called it a home. Or maybe she knew and was just pretending she wasn’t suffocating.
I closed the folder before I could tear it in half.
“Sir,” Quinn said softly. “Are you… alright?”
I laughed—short, unhinged. “Do I look alright?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Good. I’d be worried if I did.” I leaned back into the couch, letting the file sit like a brick on my chest.
Three years of pretending I didn’t want more from her. Three years of lying to myself. Three years of being Julian-the-lover and hiding the real Julian. She was about to meet him, though. Him in all his vengefulness—him without restraint, without apology, without the fucking leash I’d wrapped around my own throat.
I sat up too fast, the world spinning violently, but I didn’t care. I grabbed the file again. Every smile she’d forced for the cameras enraged me. Seeing them together made bile rise in my throat.
She disregarded me, but she was a perfect wife to a man who didn’t touch her. Didn’t want her. Didn’t deserve her.
My vision blurred. “I’m going to ruin him,” I whispered.
Quinn froze. “Sir—”
“ I’m going to ruin him. Because I can’t ruin her.” I looked up. “And when I’m done, she’s going to see exactly who she tried to walk away from.”
Quinn took a cautious step back. “Sir, you’re drunk. You’re upset. Maybe you should—”
“I want the Ashworth’s at my banquet and her, especially her,” I said, cutting him off and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
