Chapter 2: Three Years of Ashes

I make it two blocks before my hands start shaking.

Not fear. Not regret. Just adrenaline finally catching up with the fact that I just crashed Damien Cross's engagement party and dumped champagne all over his future wife. The catering company is probably firing me right now. Adding me to some blacklist. Whatever. I've been fired from better jobs for worse reasons.

The November air bites through my thin jacket as I walk toward the subway. My phone's already buzzing—probably my supervisor, probably furious. I silence it. Let them be angry. Let them all be angry.

I saw his face. That's all that matters.

I saw the exact moment Damien realized who I was, and I watched three years of carefully constructed denial crumble. He thought he'd never have to face me. Thought I'd just... disappeared. Faded away like I never mattered.

Guess again, asshole.

My apartment is forty minutes away in Queens—a studio that's probably smaller than Damien's walk-in closet. The building smells like someone's cooking fish, and the radiator clanks like it's possessed, but it's mine. I'm paying for it. Nobody can take it away.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

The envelope is waiting on my kitchen counter where I left it this morning. Thick manila folder, my name written in handwriting I don't recognize. It arrived three days ago, the day after my grandfather's funeral. No return address. No explanation.

Just my name. And inside, clipped to a stack of documents: Damien Cross - Destroy Him.

I haven't opened it yet. Haven't been ready.

But after tonight?

I pour myself the cheapest whiskey money can buy—old habits from broke days that I haven't quite shaken—and sit down at my tiny kitchen table. The folder sits there like a bomb waiting to explode.

But first, I need to remember. Need to let myself feel it. All of it.

Because if I'm really going to do this—if I'm going to destroy Damien Cross the way he destroyed me—I need to remember exactly why.

Three years ago, I had everything.

That's the part that kills me. Not that I lost it all—though God knows that's bad enough. But that I had it. I was happy. Successful. Twenty-five years old with an MBA from Columbia and a corner office at my father's company, Kane Tech Solutions.

We weren't billionaires. But we were comfortable. More than comfortable. Dad had built the company from nothing, and it was thriving. Cutting-edge encryption software, major government contracts, a client list that read like a Fortune 500 directory.

I was being groomed to take over eventually. Learning the business from the ground up. Working eighty-hour weeks because I loved it, because I wanted to make my father proud, because I genuinely believed I was building something that mattered.

And then I met Damien at that conference in Vegas.

God, he was smooth. Charming in that effortless way that should've been a red flag but instead felt like fate. We talked about everything that first night—books, travel, the weird overlap between technology and philosophy. He made me laugh. Made me feel seen in a way I hadn't felt in years.

"I'm in acquisitions," he'd said when I asked what he did. "Private equity. Mostly tech sector stuff. Boring, really."

It wasn't boring. It was a lie.

He was a corporate raider. A destroyer of companies. The kind of man who found vulnerable businesses, extracted every ounce of value, and left them bleeding out in bankruptcy court.

But I didn't know that then.

Then, I just knew that when he kissed me at 2 AM outside the hotel, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

We dated for six months. Six months of flying to meet each other in different cities, of long phone calls that lasted until dawn, of falling so completely in love that I ignored every single warning sign.

And there were warning signs.

The way he'd ask about work, always so interested in the details. The projects we were developing. The clients we were courting. I thought he was just being supportive. Engaged. Interested in my life.

"Tell me about the Meridian contract," he'd say, running his fingers through my hair while we lay in bed. "You sounded stressed about it on the phone."

So I'd tell him. About the security protocols we were developing. About the encryption algorithms. About the fact that we were about to land the biggest government contract in the company's history—something that would set us up for the next decade.

I told him everything.

Because I loved him. Because I trusted him. Because I was an idiot who thought pillow talk was just pillow talk.

Three months before my father's company collapsed, Damien told me he loved me. We were in Paris—he'd surprised me with a weekend trip, said he wanted to see the city through my eyes. We stood on the Pont des Arts bridge at sunset, and he held my face in his hands and said, "I love you, Aria Kane. I want to build a life with you."

I cried. Happy tears. Overwhelmed tears. I-can't-believe-this-is-real tears.

Two months later, I brought him to Sunday dinner at my parents' house. My father liked him. My mother adored him. We drank wine on the back patio, and Dad talked about retirement, about passing the company to me, about grandchildren someday.

Damien smiled and held my hand and fit into my family like he'd always belonged there.

One month later, everything imploded.

I remember the phone call. I'll remember it for the rest of my life.

I was at Whole Foods, trying to decide if I could afford the organic vegetables or if I should stick with regular. Damien was supposed to come over that night. I was planning to cook—trying to be domestic, trying to prove I could balance career and relationship.

My father's CFO called me at 3:47 PM on a Tuesday.

"Aria." His voice was shaking. "You need to come to the office. Now."

"What's wrong?"

"Just... come. Please."

I abandoned my cart in the produce section and drove ninety miles an hour into Manhattan. Ran through the office building lobby, up to the fourteenth floor where Kane Tech had its headquarters.

The place was chaos. People were crying. Packing boxes. Security was already there, changing the locks.

"What the hell is happening?" I grabbed the CFO's arm. "Mark, what's going on?"

He couldn't look at me. "We've been compromised. Someone leaked... everything. Client data. Proprietary algorithms. Security protocols. The Meridian contract fell through this morning. They're suing us for breach of confidentiality. Three other clients terminated within the hour. The banks are calling in our loans. We're... Jesus, Aria. We're finished."

I felt my knees go weak. "How? Who would—"

"We don't know. But it was someone on the inside. Someone with access to everything."

I called my father. No answer.

I called Damien. The number was disconnected.

That's when the cold started to spread through my chest. This sick, certain knowledge that I already knew the answer. Already knew who had access to everything. Who I'd given access to.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."

But yes. God yes.

I found the evidence later, after the lawyers got involved. Shell companies. Competitor payments. A trail of money that led directly to Damien's actual employer—a vulture capital firm that specialized in destroying companies from the inside out.

He'd targeted me. Researched my father's company, identified me as the weak link, and seduced every piece of information out of me with smiles and kisses and promises of forever.

It took him six months to destroy what my father spent twenty years building.

The bankruptcy filing came two weeks later. By then, I'd liquidated everything I could to try to help—sold my car, my apartment, my jewelry. Moved back in with my parents. Watched my father age a decade in days.

He stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Just sat in his study staring at the wall, at the framed photos of the company's early days, at the life he'd built that was now ash.

My mother kept trying. Kept bringing him food, kept telling him it would be okay, we'd rebuild, we'd survive this.

But we all knew the truth. The shame was killing him. Not just the business failure—the knowledge that his daughter's boyfriend had destroyed everything. That I'd been the weapon used against him.

He never blamed me out loud. That somehow made it worse.

I came home from a job interview—my first one, for a position that paid a quarter of what I used to make—and found my mother sitting on the front steps. Just sitting there, staring at nothing.

"Mom?"

She looked up at me. Her face was gray. Empty.

"He's gone, Aria. Your father is... he's gone."

The gun was still in his hand when I ran inside. The study walls were... I can't. I still can't think about that part without feeling like I'm drowning.

The note was short: I'm sorry. I failed you all. This is the only way.

I drain my whiskey. Pour another.

After the funeral, I had nothing. Less than nothing. I had debt from trying to save the company, no job prospects, and a mother who'd moved to Arizona to live with her sister because she couldn't bear to stay in New York.

I worked as a bartender. As a dog walker. I escorted for six months—that's right, I'm not ashamed—because it paid better than anything else I qualified for. I survived. Barely.

And then, three weeks ago, I got the call about my grandfather.

Richard Sterling. My mother's father. We'd been estranged for years—he'd never approved of her marrying "beneath" her, never acknowledged me as family. I'd met him maybe five times in my entire life.

But he was dying. Brain cancer. And he wanted to see me.

I went to the hospital expecting... I don't know. A deathbed apology? Money? Something.

What I got was an empire.

"Your mother was my only child," he'd rasped, his voice destroyed by illness and age. "And you're her only child. I was... I was wrong. About everything. Too proud. Too stubborn." His hand found mine, papery and weak. "You're a Sterling. Act like it."

He died six hours later.

The will reading was two days after that. I showed up in my only decent dress—three years old, slightly too big now—expecting maybe a token inheritance. A few thousand dollars. Enough to pay off some debt.

Instead, I got Stellar Holdings. Twelve billion dollars in real estate, investments, and a tech venture capital firm that specialized in—I shit you not—acquisitions.

The lawyers explained it all in terms I barely understood. Trusts. Portfolios. Board seats. Suddenly I was the CEO of a company that could buy and sell Damien's entire operation before lunch.

I walked out of that office in shock. Sat in a coffee shop for three hours, staring at my phone, at my bank account that now had more zeros than I could process.

Then I went home to my shitty studio apartment. Because where else would I go?

And three days later, the folder arrived.

Now I'm looking at it. Really looking at it.

Damien Cross - Destroy Him.

My hands are steady as I open it. Inside: documents. Photographs. Financial records. A USB drive labeled "Evidence."

And on top, a handwritten note in my grandfather's distinctive scrawl:

Aria,

If you're reading this, I'm dead. Good. I was ready.

I know what that bastard did to you. To Marcus. I had him investigated the moment I heard what happened. This folder contains everything you need to destroy Damien Cross—his crimes, his vulnerabilities, his secrets.

I couldn't help you three years ago. Too proud. Too foolish. But I can help you now.

You're a Sterling. We don't just survive. We conquer.

Make him pay.

—R.S.

I flip through the documents. And Jesus Christ.

Insider trading. Corporate espionage. Fraud. Securities violations. It's all here. Every illegal thing Damien's ever done, documented with the kind of thoroughness that only billions of dollars can buy.

One phone call to the SEC, and he'd go to prison for twenty years.

But as I read further, I realize something.

His company is failing. The firm that employed him—that used him to destroy my father—has been making bad bets. They're leveraged to hell. Bleeding money. One more major loss and they're finished.

And Damien? According to these documents, he's desperate. Personally on the hook for millions. That engagement to Victoria Sterling? It's not love.

It's a lifeline. Her father's money is the only thing keeping him afloat.

I sit back, my mind racing.

I could destroy him legally. Send him to prison. Watch him lose everything from behind bars.

Or...

Or I could do something better.

Something slower. More personal. Something that makes him feel every single thing I felt.

My phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number:

"We need to talk. Please. —D"

I stare at it. Delete it without responding.

Then I pick up my own phone and dial the number listed on the first page of the folder. My grandfather's lawyer.

He answers on the second ring. "Ms. Sterling. I've been expecting your call."

"Tell me about Stellar Holdings," I say. "Tell me everything."

By the time I hang up an hour later, I'm smiling.

Oh, Damien.

You have no idea what's coming.