CHAPTER 1

"Where's it...where's it...where the fuck is it?" I whispered to myself, which, in hindsight, was probably not my most dignified moment. But committing corporate espionage at midnight in a company that could have me arrested and publicly humiliated was already doing enough damage to my dignity. Using a vulgar word like ‘fuck’ was the least of my problems.

I scrolled through the desktop with one hand and used the office window as a mirror with the other, watching the dark corridor outside for any movement. It was still empty, exactly as I predicted.

I had spent weeks scheming, confirming that this floor would be deserted at this hour.

My eyes drifted to the corridor again anyway.

I clicked through one folder, then another, then another that turned out to be nothing but quarterly reports from four years ago. I almost closed it before I saw it—a locked folder, Pandora box, the one thing that could bring the Grey Empire to its knees.

I clicked it and a password prompt appeared just as I expected.

Three attempts before a permanent lockout, I knew that too, along with everything about this man's systems except, apparently, how to stop my hands from being slightly unsteady as I hovered over the keyboard.

You're fine. You're completely fine.

"Van Grey." I typed it first. It was exactly the kind of password a man like him would use —his own name, because the entire world already revolved around it, so why not his security system too.

It beeped wrong.

I let out a deep sigh.  Two attempts left.

What could it be?

"Monique." The woman he chose over me. His precious Monique, with her perfect posture and her crazy ass smile.

It beeped again, wrong.

I stared at the screen. One attempt left, and if I got this wrong I was walking out of here with nothing. Five years of waiting, planning for this perfect moment—all of it, for nothing.

I typed the last thing I had. It was a long shot though. A ridiculous, embarrassing, completely illogical long shot.

“Zara Solis.”

My heart skipped two beats as I typed it in.

The folder opened.

I sat there for a full minute, staring at the screen as my mind reeled in confusion.

The man who ended things without flinching, who looked me in the eye and told me that his feelings had simply checked out—that man had kept my name as his password, for five years.

I should have found it flattering, but instead, it was so infuriating.

I plugged in the flash drive and started the extraction, my mind fully focused, trying to block out any extra meaning from the password stunt.

The extraction was at sixty percent when I heard the footsteps.

My heart was threatening to burst out of my ribcage at that point.

Who could possibly be here at this hour?

The progress bar hit seventy. My gaze shifted from the screen to the corridor as the footsteps got even closer.

Eighty percent.

If I stayed up to a minute more, I would definitely get caught. I yanked the flash drive out.

The alarm was immediate and humiliatingly loud—a sharp, piercing shriek that filled the entire office and probably the three floors below it.

Shit.

The flashdrive seemed to have a sensor that triggered if it was removed before the extraction was complete. I didn't know about that so I hadn't factored it in.

I stood up immediately, bursting through the office door, my heart pounding so loud I could literally hear it. I turned left into the corridor and walked directly into something solid enough to knock the breath clean out of me.

I recognized the scent immediately, that flower scent I had spent five years trying to forget.

I looked up, my heart pounding even faster as I realised how screwed I was.

Van Grey.

He was staring down at me with the same unsurprised and completely unreadable expression he had worn the day he told me that he was done and had no interest in the relationship anymore.

Five years had passed and he still hadn't changed a bit.

The alarm was still screaming, as hurried footsteps were coming from the stairwell. I tried to step around him and flee, but he moved, blocking my path.

I tried the other side and he moved again, his expression still empty.

His hand closed around my wrist and he pulled me sideways into a room I hadn't even seen, shutting the door behind us in one smooth motion. His other hand came up and covered my mouth before I could say a single word, and I was pressed against the wall in the dark with my heart completely in my throat, his hand warm against my face and his jaw approximately four inches from my eyes.

He looked exactly the same, handso—

This is not the time, Zara.

The footsteps passed and they faded down to the other side of the hall.

I removed his hand from my mouth, my gaze locking with his.

"What was that for?" I asked angrily, even though I knew I had no right to be here and could probably be sued for trespassing and a long list of other things.

"I should be asking you that." His voice was exactly as calm as I remembered. "Seeing as you're sneaking around my building. Is that what you do now, Zara?"

"You mean now—" I tried to keep my voice low but despite my best efforts it still came out loud, "— as in five years after you chose that bitch over me?"

He lifted his gaze to meet mine. "You're still not over it."

"I am completely over it. I am so far over it." I crossed my arms. "I'm just stating facts."

"Is that why you were in my office?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I mean, how do I tell him that I came to steal the one thing—he told me about five years ago—that could destroy his entire empire.

He looked at me for a long moment like I actually wasn't worth his worry and opened the door.

I walked out, my heart violently slamming against my ribcage.

This was foolish, this was entirely foolish. After all these years, all I'd accomplished was embarrass and look like a complete idiot in front of my ex who didn't even rate me enough to consider me a threat.

I made it home, changed out of the black outfit and fell face-first onto my bed.

I was asleep before I could even process everything that happened.

My phone woke me up.

I reached for it with my eyes still closed, expecting an alarm, and instead got a news notification with a headline that made me sit upright so fast I nearly rolled off the mattress.

GREY EMPIRE SECURITY BREACH — CORPORATE SABOTAGE SUSPECTED. Woman caught on CCTV accessing restricted files.

The footage was clear. Embarrassingly, humiliatingly clear. The timestamp, the office, the desktop, my face—all of it, right there, on every major outlet I could find when I frantically switched from app to app hoping one of them had somehow missed it.

I had checked those cameras. I had fucking checked them. They were all turned off, so how come?

My mind went immediately to the one person who could have released this. The one person who had found me in that corridor and made a choice that, at the time, I had been foolish enough to interpret as something resembling mercy.

A second notification dropped before I could finish the thought.

LIVE: Van Grey addresses press conference.

I opened it immediately, my palms shaky as I held the phone.

He was at his desk, composed, as always, in a way that made me want to throw my phone across the room. He leaned forward slightly, looked directly into the camera, and said the words that ended my life as I had known it for the past five years.

"I'd like to apologize to my wife first," he said, in a tone that sounded nothing like an apology. "She's a private person, she never liked attention, and I should have found a better way to handle this." He paused for a moment. "But for clarity—the woman in that footage is not a saboteur. She's not a criminal,” he straightened in his chair. "She's my wife.”