“I’m not the same person I was when I left,” I finally said.
“Neither am I. I’ve learned things, Willa. About patience. About planning. About how to get what I want without making the mistakes I made before.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning next time, I won’t miss.”
The threat was quiet, matter-of-fact, and somehow more terrifying than all his previous rage. This wasn’t the drunk, impulsive man who had hunted me through the streets. This was someone calculating—someone who had spent weeks preparing for this moment.
“I need time to think,” I said.
“You have twenty-four hours. No—actually, I’ll be generous. Let’s make it forty-eight. After that, I’ll start sharing information with people who will be very interested in Cross Security’s client files. People who don’t like federal judges. People who have strong feelings about corporate executives. People who know how to hold grudges.”
“And if I come back?”
“Then we start over. Clean slate. I’ve been to therapy, Willa. I’ve learned about my anger, about communication. We can be happy together. We can be what we were always meant to be.”
The sincerity in his voice was almost worse than the threats. Because I had heard that tone before—after every incident, every apology, every promise that things would be different. And for a terrifying moment, I almost believed him again.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“You can. And you will. Because deep down, you know the truth—you’re not meant for his world. You’re not sophisticated enough, educated enough, strong enough to be with someonelike Kieran Cross. You’re meant for someone who knows your value. Someone who fought for you when you had nothing left to fight with.”
Each word was carefully chosen, designed to strike the insecurities I carried since the day I walked into Kieran’s penthouse. The quiet knowledge that I didn’t belong among his designer furniture and corporate connections. The certainty that eventually he would realize he could do better than his best friend’s damaged little sister.
“Forty-eight hours,” Dex repeated. “Don’t disappoint me, baby. You know how I get when I’m disappointed.”
The line went dead, and I stood there in Cross Security’s polished corridor, staring at my phone and feeling like I was going to be sick. The hum of the building pressed in around me, too clean, too controlled, as if it were mocking the chaos unraveling inside my chest.
Because as much as I wanted to dismiss everything he said as the ramblings of an abusive ex-husband, I knew he wasn’t bluffing. The business troubles consuming Kieran, the strain I saw settling into his shoulders, the emergency calls that kept pulling him away—it was all Dex.
And now he was offering me a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all.
Let Kieran’s world burn, or walk back into the fire myself.
I thought about the kiss we shared three nights ago, about the way he said we were both too broken to be fixed. Maybe he was right. Maybe love wasn’t about two damaged people healing each other.
Maybe sometimes it was about one damaged person choosing to sacrifice themselves to keep the other from being destroyed.
I looked toward Kieran’s office, where I could see him through the glass walls, head in his hands as he spoke onthe phone—probably another client demanding explanations he couldn’t give.
Forty-eight hours to decide whether to save him or save myself.
But as I watched him run his fingers through his dark hair in frustration, as I saw the weight of failure settling more heavily on his shoulders, I realized the choice was already made.
Some people were worth saving, even if it meant destroying yourself to do it.
The question was whether I was brave enough to follow through.
16KIERAN
I was expectinganother crisis call when Willa knocked on my office door that afternoon. Another client pulled their contract, another business relationship turned to ash, another piece of the empire I built crumbling under the weight of coordinated sabotage.
Instead, I looked up to find her standing in my doorway with an expression I had never seen before. Determined. Resolved. Almost fierce in a way that reminded me of the girl who once stood up to bullies twice her size when they picked on smaller kids in foster care.
“We need to talk,” she said, closing the door behind her.
“If this is about the other night?—”
