Chapter 33
T he day started out fucking perfect.
I lean back in my chair, rereading the last text Elena sent me, letting the words sink in like a slow burn.
"It's a date."
My thumb taps against the side of my phone as I look at her reply.
Tonight. Dinner at the penthouse. Just the two of us.
I smirk, running a hand through my hair, my body thrumming with something I haven’t felt in a long time: anticipation.
The end of our contract is looming, only days away, but for the first time since this arrangement started, I know exactly what I want.
I want her.
Not as a business arrangement. Not as a pretend fiancée. But as mine.
I don’t give a fuck about the terms we started with. I don’t care about the lines we agreed to keep in place because every single one of them has blurred into nothing.
Elena belongs with me.
Tonight, I’ll tell her.
Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe I should be careful, ease into it, play it safe.
But I don’t want to.
I’ll go as slow as she wants, but I want her in my home, in my bed. In my life.
Permanently.
A glance at the clock tells me I have ten minutes before Calloway arrives. The sixty-fifth-floor conference room is already filling with lawyers, their low conversations a steady hum as they prepare for the final stages of the merger.
Two days. That’s all it will take to sign everything, to finalize every detail.
By tomorrow night, it’ll be done.
Everything I’ve built, everything I’ve worked toward, will expand in ways I never thought possible.
Marcus steps inside, his face a mask of something cold, unreadable.
The shift in the air is immediate. The steady rhythm of my pulse falters.
I know that look. Something’s wrong.
I straighten in my chair, the good mood that had been lingering just moments ago slipping through my fingers like sand.
“Everyone out.” My voice is steady, with a sharp edge beneath it.
Marcus’s eyes sweep the room in confirmation.
We’ve been friends for so long, we can communicate without words at this point. Whatever this is, it’s fucking bad.
The lawyers gather their files, making their exit.
The last one barely clears the doorway before Marcus moves, striding toward the conference table. His fingers fly across the keyboard as he connects his laptop to the screen on the wall.
A sinking feeling coils in my gut.
This isn’t good.
This isn’t something minor. This isn’t just another corporate fire to put out.
This is something worse.
“You’re fucking killing me, Marc.” I nearly growl the words, my jaw tight. “What is it?”
Marcus exhales, his voice low and measured, controlled in a way that only makes the unease gnawing at my ribs tighten.
“I found something. You’re not gonna like it.”
The words hang between us like a live wire, pulsing with tension as Marcus’s computer connects to the screen.
“I’m sorry, Damien.”
I can’t look at him—I don’t need to. Whatever he found, he already knows it’s going to gut me.
The television lights up, and I freeze.
The entire fucking world stops spinning as my mind processes what I’m looking at.
“What is this?” I ask Marcus, but I can’t look away.
“It’s a deleted account. One of our guys recovered it.”
Old social media pictures flood the screen.
At first, I don’t recognize her. She looks different—younger. Her hair is shorter, streaked with blonde highlights. Her smile is freer, brighter. Untouched by the weight of the world she carries now.
But it’s her.
It’s Elena.
My stomach knots as my eyes track to the person standing beside her. Too close. Too fucking familiar with that smug fucking face.
Mother fucking Adrian.
I go still, my breath locking in my chest. The air feels thick, heavy, pressing against me like a vise. Marcus says nothing, watching me carefully.
“Keep going,” I grind out.
The images shift. More of them.
Elena and Adrian. Together.
Not just knowing each other—lovers.
Kissing. Embracing. Wrapped around each other in ways that make my blood boil.
“This can’t fucking be possible.”
I pull his laptop to me, taking it over and moving faster through the files, begging to see proof these have been doctored. Fakes. Digital images created on a computer to drive a fucking spike through me.
One of the files is a social media post several years old. A video.
My world darkens as soon as I open it.
The setting is a beach, waves crashing in the background. Could be the fucking Hamptons. Could be the exact place we were this weekend, where she pretended she didn’t fucking know him.
My jaw clenches as I hit play.
Adrian’s smirking into the camera, sunglasses perched on his nose, his arms wrapped around her. One hand holding her breast over her bikini. Like she belongs there.
"Partners in crime," he says, grinning.
Elena laughs, shaking her head. Then she looks back at him, her eyes shining.
"Forever," she chimes in.
And then—he kisses her.
Right there. In the open. In front of the whole fucking world. And it hits me like a dagger twisting in my gut.
His lips move against hers, his tongue sweeping into her mouth. The same mouth I kissed this morning.
The same mouth I made mine.
I slam my fist into the table.
Marcus doesn’t flinch, but the screen flickers as the impact shakes the laptop.
Pain crashes into me like a freight train.
She fucking played me.
My hands curl into fists as I stare at the screen, my pulse thundering so hard I can hear it in my ears.
Everything between us—all of it. The push and pull, the fights, the stolen moments, the way she trembled for me, the way she fucking melted for me?—
None of it was fucking real.
A harsh, ragged breath rips from my lungs, and my chest feels like it’s cracking open.
Adrian.
She was his.
She still is.
Every moment they interacted at the Calloway’s Hamptons retreat rushes through me.
When she looked flustered just before the yacht. Fuck—he was goddamn staring at her on the fucking boat.
Practically waving a sign in front of my face that says: I FUCKED HER FIRST.
His cock-sucking hands on her as they danced. I knew it looked too familiar.
Because it was. Because he probably knows every inch of her like I do.
But what is their fucking angle? What do they get out of this?
Adrian was clearly trying to sabotage the merger. Is there another buyer waiting to come in after? Take the sale at a cheaper rate when Calloway is fucking desperate, and Adrian gets a fucking kickback?
And what does Elena get out of it?
My ten million fucking dollars, for one.
Our contract never said my merger needed to succeed. Only that she needed to spend the two weeks pretending to love me. To be my fucking pretend partner in life. And if she sold herself perfectly, she’d be a rich woman.
They’re playing us at both ends. Calloway and me.
I can’t fucking look at that screen another second.
The chair flies away from me when I kick it back, walking over to the windows that overlook the city. It’s dead silent out there. The noise of the city is blocked by the thick glass while the storm is right here in this conference room.
In my fucking mind.
My hands rest on my hips to keep me from punching the windows.
The fucking Blackstone stands tall in the distance, and I know she’s in my fucking penthouse right this goddamn second.
All I can think of is Genevieve. Walking into my house, hearing her with him. Seeing them.
I feel the rage within me rise, my face burning as my anger becomes something palpable.
“There’s something else.” Marcus’s voice is just as grave now as it was a moment ago.
Of course there’s something else.
“You know that trace I had on Adrian’s cell?”
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. I feel like I already know what he’s going to say, and I don’t know that I’ll survive it.
“He was near the Blackstone this morning.”
I swear to fucking God.
“There’s another video, Damien.” I hear Marcus slide the laptop across the polished wood table. The soft clicking of keys blares around the room.
I don’t want to fucking look at it because my goddamn heart is breaking apart in my chest.
“Damien.” Marcus’s voice is a warning.
Finally, I turn my head, my eyes dead as I take in the scene unfolding.
Coldness creeps back over the empty cavity that I freely let Elena warm up. Like a pathetic fucking moron.
It’s a café I know well. Only two blocks away from my penthouse. I stop there all the fucking time.
The timestamp in the corner of the screen nearly makes me implode. The final tendrils of my dead fucking heart snap, leaving nothing within me.
It’s less than an hour after I left her in my bed.
Adrian is sitting in the corner, and it’s clear he recognizes someone.
Elena walks up to the table and gives him something. The pathetic ball cap she’s wearing is a ridiculous disguise.
It’s almost insulting.
She leaves, and he follows her.
The recording ends. Just like every fucking feeling I developed for her since that night she walked into my restaurant.
Another manipulating woman I dove headfirst into.
My jaw clenches so tight it aches, but I barely feel it through the rush of white-hot rage flooding my system.
The betrayal is suffocating.
I was going to tell her tonight. I was going to give her everything. I was going to tell her I fucking fell in love with her.
And the whole time, she’s been in on this. From the very beginning.
Adrian.
Elena.
Two names I’ll carve into my mind, branding them with the promise that they will pay.
For every second I spent believing in her.
For every night I lay awake, thinking about her.
For every fucking moment she made me feel like she was mine.
I turn from the window, my entire body coiled so tight I feel like I might snap.
Marcus watches me carefully, his expression unreadable. “What do you want to do?”
My chest rises and falls, my breath slow and controlled despite the inferno raging inside me.
“I’m going to find out what she gave him.”
I meet his gaze, my voice dark, lethal.
“Then I’m going to bury them both.”