Chapter 3

Vincent. Clara.

Everything you took from me today—I would make you return a thousand times over.

I opened my encrypted inbox. An email had been sitting there for two weeks. An offer from the headquarters of Coastal Summit Global Medical Group.

My family's way out. Their fallback for me. I had turned it down again and again, all to protect the scraps of what I had with Vincent.

I didn't need to anymore.

My fingers landed on the screen:

"I accept. I report in three days. I'll take the position of Global CEO."

The moment the email went through, I pressed the direct line I hadn't called in five years.

The line picked up. I spoke quietly.

"I lost the bet. I'm coming home."

The voice on the other end was steady.

"Good. Clean up what needs cleaning up. The private jet is on standby at the London airport. Someone will meet you."

I hung up, pulled out the IV from the back of my hand, and ignored the nurse's protests. I gritted my teeth, forced my weakened body upright, and checked myself out alone.

Paperwork done, I took the private elevator to the top floor—to my CEO office.

Before I left, there were chains to break. The shackles I'd worn for years, piled on top of me—they all had to come off.

I pushed the office door open and the scene in front of me hit me like a bucket of molten iron in the face.

The group contracts I'd signed yesterday were scattered across my desk.

And Vincent was on top of that desk—the desk I'd used for five years—pressing Clara down against it, doing the most obscene thing possible.

Clara's moans were loud, deliberate, performative. Vincent's breathing carried an abandon I had never heard from him.

"Vincent—right there—harder—"

"That's it. Louder. I love hearing it. You, like this—you're so much more fun than Layla lying there like a dead fish while I have to do all the work."

"You just had a baby. You're really going to do this to me right now? Aren't you afraid she'll come back?"

"Her? She's a used-up woman with no child and no future womb. Without me, she's nothing. Coastal Summit is mine. Even if she walks in, what's she going to do about it?"

I stood in the doorway. My fingertips went cold. My whole body trembled as if I had fallen into ice.

I raised my hand and flipped the light switch on the wall. The room went blindingly bright.

Clara shrieked and grabbed her clothes, scrambling to hide behind Vincent.

Vincent saw it was me. Not a flicker of panic. Not a hint of guilt. He pulled his jacket back on, slow and unhurried, and looked down at me with cold irritation.

"Layla. You should be in bed recovering. What are you doing here? Can't you go a single day without work?"

I ignored him. From my bag I took out the documents I had prepared and held them out to him.

"Quarterly pharmaceutical procurement and risk-control filings. Need your signature."

I looked him in the eye. My voice was perfectly level.

His face tightened. He flipped through the pages, saw nothing out of place, and signed.

Before handing the stack back, he caught my chin between his fingers. His eyes were full of warning, and the arrogance of a man bestowing a favor.

"Layla. Don't even think about leaving. You're an orphan your own family cast out. Without me, where would you go? I'm the Don of the Jones Family. I run the top medical group in Europe. I have the money and the power. You've been with me five years—you're used goods now. Who else would want you?"

He leaned in, his voice turning into what he believed was tenderness, laced with contempt down to the bone.

"I believe in fairness. Whatever Clara gets, you'll get too. She just gave birth. She needs me. From now on—Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, weekends, I'll be with her and the baby. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'll come to you. Once we have another child, I'll split the time evenly. How does that sound?"

I had never imagined that the man who had once put my wishes above everything, who had once taken on his entire family for me over the smallest slight—could become this.

I twisted out of his grip, took the documents back, didn't look at him once, and walked out.

It enraged him. Behind me I heard him roar, and then the crash of glass shattering against the wall.

He would never know—what he had just smashed was the last fortune he would ever own.

Everything he was so proud of, would soon be dust.

I walked out the hospital doors. The London evening wind hit my face. The papers in my hand curled at the corners.

I peeled back the cover documents and pulled out the CEO resignation letter and the divorce agreement.

Then I couriered the original divorce agreement and all the signed authorizations directly to my lawyer.

Then I got into the car waiting at the curb and headed for the airport.

London scrolled past the window.

Five years ago, when I met Vincent, I had just broken with my family. One stubborn woman alone. And he had just barely survived the family power struggles inside the Jones Family—a Don in name, with no real power behind it.

We both hated the arrangements our families had made for us. We both wanted to throw off the chains our bloodlines had hung on us. Our souls had been that close.

He said his dream was to be the greatest surgeon in Europe. I was the one who made that dream real.

I had believed, once, that he was the salvation God had sent me.

I hadn't realized he'd only dragged me out of one abyss and into a deeper, darker hell.

No matter.

I was going home now.

Everything that belonged to me, I would take back with my own hands. And everyone who owed me—I would make them pay in blood.