32. Michael
Michael
The lights are too bright. The champagne too cold.
The damn tree looks like a Macy’s threw up glitter and rhinestones.
I didn’t pick it, of course. Krystal did.
Along with the hundred-thousand-dollar centerpiece from some pretentious art dealer in Zurich, the imported poinsettias lining the foyer, and the ice sculpture of a reindeer in the shape of the tribal casino’s logo.
I would’ve preferred firewood and silence.
Instead, I’m in a tux I hate, sipping from a Krystal flute while every shark I’ve ever done business with circles the room, toasting to the success of the merger like it’s some holy fucking union.
Krystal laughs somewhere behind me. Too loud, too forced. She’s wearing a red dress so tight it looks like it was painted on, and her diamonds gleam like warning signs.
We’ve barely spoken. She wants the ring, the photo ops, the title. But me? She’ll never get. I haven’t touched her since the night I proposed. I won’t.
I can’t.
Because every night, when I turn off the lights, it’s Kate I see.
Not Krystal.
Kate in her ridiculous flannel pajama pants and my shirt. Kate barefoot on my balcony with a cup of coffee and that sleepy smile. Kate curled into my side on the couch, Amber snoring between us, laughing at my playlist.
Kate.
And fuck me, it hurts.
I haven’t slept in the bed since. Not once. I take the couch or one of the guest rooms. It’s better that way. Krystal tried the first night, some rehearsed act of seduction. I walked out without a word. She hasn’t tried since.
“Michael,” Uncle Romano’s voice cuts through the crowd, dragging me back. “The councilman’s asking for you.”
Of course he is.
I nod once, hand the half-full champagne flute to the nearest waiter, and follow him across the room. Eyes are on me from every direction. I’m the man who got the deal done. The man who swallowed his pride and proposed to save face and billions. The man who always wins.
But I don’t feel like a winner.
I feel like a fucking ghost.
Because I gave up everything real to keep everything fake.
As we pass the massive windows, I catch my own reflection—dark, sharp, hollow-eyed. I pause. I stare. The penthouse is spotless. Ornate. Cold.
And in that moment, I realize I’d burn it all down just to hold her one more time.
One night. One whisper. One stolen smile.
And I would trade every dollar I’ve ever made.
The code beeps quietly. Only two people alive know it—me and Brett. Not even Vito. Not even Krystal.
The study door swings open and closes behind me with a hush. It’s the only room in this penthouse I can still breathe in. The only place untouched by all this faux holiday cheer and hollow celebration. The walls are dark oak, the floors scuffed where I used to pace during sleepless nights.
Now I just sit.
I grab the cigar from the humidor, clip it slow, deliberate. The flame hisses as I light it. That first inhale burns—sweet, sharp, grounding. I close my eyes and lean back into the leather chair, letting the silence do what music and noise never could.
I’m not a man who loses. Not land. Not loyalty. Not women.
Yet here I am.
My desk is a fucking war zone. Maps. Deeds. Satellite images. Surveillance reports.
Her name is on everything.
Kathryn Miller Peters. North Star Holdings. Family trust. Layers upon layers of iron-clad shell companies, legal smoke screens, and airtight NDAs. I trained myself to spot this kind of thing—this level of play—and still, she slipped past me like water through fingers.
Her condo? Sure. That was public enough. I knew about it after week one.
But the building?
She owns it.
Through North Star. Quiet, clean. Signed over years ago from her grandmother’s estate, slipped into a holding trust so complex it took my best forensic accountant and a pissed-off hacker three weeks to confirm it.
She didn’t just outbid me.
She outplayed me.
And I’m in love with her anyway.
I open the bottom drawer.
There it is.
The engagement ring I never got to put on her finger. Platinum, cushion cut, vintage setting. I had it made the day after our hike. I knew by the time we hit the overlook that I’d never want another woman.
I still don’t.
When I saw it on Krystal’s finger I almost ripped her hand off.
I flayed into her verbally, unleashing every dark beast inside.
Krystal crossed the fucking line. She found it on the carpet.
I assumed Brett picked it up or the cleaner.
I had it professionally cleaned—I almost took it to be blessed.
But thing was cursed not blessed. The fact that Krystal being the first and last woman to wear it still burns.
Kate’s 94 miles away in Newport, tucked into a waterfront rental her PA had secured. Ever since Brett found her clandestine office, he had a tail on Gertie. My men are stationed there in rotation. Silent protection. She doesn’t know. She can’t know.
But every man in this game does.
Every rival. Every partner.
Every enemy.
They all know where my heart is. She wrecked me.
Lied to me. Twisted the truth but I don’t believe she ever meant to really hurt me.
She was in the game before we even met. The puzzle pieces fit now—why she ran after the night we met.
Why she tried to fight the chemistry and why she hid the truth.
But that doesn’t mean I forgive her for any of it.
It just leaves both our hearts broken up into shattered pieces that want to be glued back together.
And that still puts her in danger.
Krystal knows, too. That’s why she shows up at events with too much lipstick and smug little smiles. Her uncle, the councilman, he knows. He’s been playing nice because I’m valuable. But that leash is tightening. And if they knew just how deep my obsession for Kate runs?
They’d put her in the ground to keep me in line.
I won’t let that happen.
Even if it kills me to stay away. Even if Kate hates me for what’s coming. Even if I have to marry another woman while the only one I’ve ever wanted watches from the sidelines.
I’m going to fix this. Somehow. Someday.
But tonight?
Tonight, I pour two fingers of bourbon, light another cigar, and scroll through my phone. All the pics I snapped and the ones she sent to me.
She’s curled on the couch with Amber, wearing that oversized cable-knit sweater she stole from me and never gave back. Her hair’s in a bun. No makeup. Still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I touch the screen, as if I could reach through it.
“I miss you, baby,” I whisper.
And mean it with every bleeding inch of my ruined soul.
Christmas Eve came with snow, the kind that blankets the world in silence. That softens the edges of every sharp thing. The kind that reminds you of everything you’ve lost.
I watched it fall from the penthouse windows, arms crossed, tie loosened, lights flickering behind me as my team moved quietly through the party. Not a party, really—just a dressed-up war room with champagne. Krystal’s voice filtered from the other room, high and hollow like glass about to break.
Brett stepped in without knocking, holding a flat package.
“Courier made it through all the checks,” he said, handing it to me. “From Newport.”
My heart damn near stopped.
I didn’t move for a moment. Just stared at it. Her handwriting. I knew it without question. That elegant slant, the way the K always curled into the T.
I took it into my office, locked the door after he left. Poured myself two fingers of McAllen. Neat. No ice. My hands trembled as I broke the seal.
Inside was a legal envelope and… something heavier.
A deed.
The deed.
The college campus property.
Signed over to me. Free and clear. Not a lease. Not a contract.
A gift.
The land I’d fought tooth and nail for, the missing puzzle piece to my empire.
I dropped into my chair like the wind had been knocked out of me.
Tucked inside was a letter, the paper thick, handwritten, the ink smudged in places. My hands shook as I unfolded it.
Michael,
I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me. I’m not sure I deserve it.
From the moment we met, something inside me cracked open. That night on the yacht — God, I was scared. Not of you, but of how much I wanted to believe you were different. I was drunk and spinning and out of my depth, and then the gunfire came.
I thought it was you. I was wrong.
You were the one who stopped it. You held that man down until the cops arrived. You protected me. But I ran anyway. Because I didn’t trust myself.
I wanted a fling. I wanted a fantasy.
And I found forever.
I tried to bury it. Tried to hide behind companies, fake offices, secret grants, anything to keep some space between you and the truth of who I really am.
But it was always you.
I bought the college property for my grandmother. For the girl I used to be before grief silenced the music in me. But you — you brought it back. The notes. The rhythm. The belief in something more than just surviving.
So here it is. My gift to you.
No strings. No taxes. No claws sunk in.
You can use it. You can sell it. Hell, burn it down if you want. But I hope… maybe… you’ll use it to buy your freedom.
Don’t marry Krystal. Don’t chain yourself to a woman who doesn’t see your soul.
I may not get to be the woman by your side, but I’ll never stop being the one who saw you — all of you — and still loved every broken, beautiful piece.
Maybe someday,
— Kate
The glass cracked in my hand.
I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been holding it until scotch spilled across my knuckles and ran between my fingers. A thin line of blood appeared beneath my thumb where the crystal had broken.
I set the ruined glass on my desk and stood.
Then I read the letter again.
Her voice lived in every line. Honest now, when honesty could no longer save us. She loved me. Maybe she always had, beneath the lies and evasions and every carefully constructed reason she’d given me to keep my distance.
And she had given me the land.
The one piece of Bayview I’d fought for and failed to claim. The property that could secure the expansion, strengthen my position with the tribe, and give me leverage against the people demanding I marry Krystal.
Kate believed she had bought my freedom.
She didn’t understand that freedom in my world was never that simple.
I could accept the deed, turn over every acre to the casino project, and they would still insist on the marriage. The alliance with Krystal’s family had never been about one parcel of land. It was about blood, influence, and keeping two empires from turning on each other.
Kate had sacrificed everything and solved nothing.
I looked at the deed again.
My missing piece.
Except it no longer looked like mine.
I saw what Kate had once described to me instead.
A world-class music conservatory rising above the river.
An amphitheater carved into the natural slope of the land.
Students crossing the campus with instruments on their backs.
Music carrying over the water on summer nights and reaching the windows of my tower.
My office had the perfect view.
I could have watched her build it. Watched the woman I loved reclaim the part of herself grief had taken from her. Maybe, on quiet evenings, I would have opened my window and heard the melodies she believed were gone.
That future hurt more than the one I had planned.
My luxury resort. The five-star water park. The lazy river winding through another profitable monument to the Waters name.
I’d rather have heard her music.
But love wasn’t enough in my world. Trust kept you alive. Loyalty protected everyone standing beside you. Kate had hidden the truth until there was no safe path left for either of us.
She hadn’t trusted me with her name, her business, or the land.
How could I ever trust her with my bed again?
My heart?
I folded the letter along its original creases and placed it inside the drawer of my desk.
The deed remained in front of me.
A knock sounded, and Brett stepped into the office. His gaze moved from the broken glass to the blood on my hand, then to the papers.
He didn’t ask what the letter said.
He didn’t have to.
“Send it back,” I said.
Brett looked at the drawer where I’d placed her letter. “All of it?”
My hand rested over the closed drawer.
“The deed.”
Something shifted in his expression. Recognition, perhaps. He understood what it meant to reject the future and keep the piece that hurt the most.
Things with Claire had ended because of this war too. Kate and I hadn’t been the only casualties. Two women had entered our world, and both had learned why men like us came with warnings.
Brett picked up the legal envelope.
“What about Krystal?” he asked.
Her laughter carried faintly from the other side of the office door, brittle and impatient.
I stared through the windows at the snow falling over Bayview. Across the dark river, Kate’s land was disappearing beneath a blanket of white.
“She gets nothing tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
I thought of Kate’s final words.
Maybe someday.
“Tomorrow, I find another way.”
Brett left with the deed.
I remained at the window long after the party ended, Kate’s letter locked inside my desk and her future waiting across the river.
The snow kept falling, softening every sharp edge in Bayview.
It couldn’t soften mine.