Chapter 1

Amara POV

The rain made the city lights look like silver and gold streaks, as if the world was behind a sheet of glass.

 I stood across from ColeTech's tower, which looked like a monument to arrogance with its steel and glass stabbing into the night sky. Damien Cole's pride.

 I felt my chest tighten as I looked up at it. His kingdom. His win. My father's downfall.

 The watch in my hand ticked softly, reminding me all the time. The watch my dad gave me. After Damien stripped him bare, all that was left of him was the pain of losing his company, the debt that consumed us, and the grief that consumed him.

 I put my fingers on the cool metal. For you, Dad. I'll burn him the same way he burned us.

I was no longer Amara Blake. Three years ago, that girl was buried with her father. I was Mara Vance tonight. 

I had a new name, a new smile, and a new reason to be. The best mask to wear to get into Damien's world. I could feel my heart racing in my throat when the elevator doors opened on the twentieth floor.

 I thought there would be a panel and a room full of people in suits. There was only him, though.

Damien Cole.

He looked different when I got close. More sharp. More height. His presence was like a storm in one person. His dark hair was a little messy, his tailored suit fit perfectly, and his gray eyes cut right through me. I thought they would be dead and mean. Instead, they were alive, too alive, and they were watching me with a calm that made me uneasy.

“Ms. Vance,” he said, his voice low, deliberate. “You’re late.”

Heat crawled up my neck. I wasn’t late, I’d been early. But one glance at the clock told me otherwise. Somehow, ten minutes had slipped through my fingers.

“I apologize, Mr. Cole,” I said quickly. “It won’t happen again.”

His lips twitched, not quite a smile. “See that it doesn’t. In this building, time is currency. We don’t waste it.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. My heart was pounding, but my face stayed smooth. My mask held.

He turned, gesturing me forward. “Follow me.”

I trailed after him down the hall, my heels tapping against polished marble, every step pulling me deeper into enemy territory. He opened a glass door, the kind that looked like it belonged in a fortress instead of an office, and waited for me to step inside.

The room was empty. Just us.

“I thought this was a panel interview,” I said carefully.

“It was,” he said, leaning against the table, arms folded. “I dismissed them.”

My stomach dropped. “Why?”

“Because I prefer to see people for myself. Paper tells me credentials. People tell me truth. So, Ms. Vance…” His eyes pinned me where I stood. “Convince me.”

Every rehearsed answer I’d practiced vanished from my mind. He wasn’t following any script. He was testing me, pushing me off balance just to see if I’d fall.

I lifted my chin. “Convince you of what, exactly?”

“That you belong here.”

Because I want to destroy you. Because I’ve waited three years for this.

But I smiled instead, steady, cold. “Because I don’t waste time either. I know what your company needs, Mr. Cole. Someone who doesn’t play it safe. Someone who can adapt, anticipate, and out-think your competition. That’s me.”

For a moment, he just stared at me. Then God help me, he smiled. A real one. It softened him, made him look younger, almost human. And that was more dangerous than his scowl would have been.

“You might be right,” he murmured.

Something in me shifted, traitorous, unsteady.

He stepped closer, circling me slowly, his presence wrapping around me like smoke. “But talk is cheap. I built this empire on instinct. And mine is rarely wrong.”

When he stopped just behind me, his voice brushed my skin. “You’ll start Monday.”

My breath caught. “I…”

“You wanted a chance. You have it now. Don’t waste it.”

And just like that, he walked away, leaving me sitting in the wreckage of my composure.

I had come here ready to play a game. But what I hadn’t expected was how quickly he’d taken control of the board.

Damien POV 

She shouldn’t have caught my attention. Candidates never did.

But the moment she stepped off that elevator, ten minutes late, rain clinging to her coat I knew Mara Vance wasn’t like the others.

It wasn’t just her face, though she was beautiful in a way that didn’t beg for notice but demanded it, anyway. No, it was her eyes. They were too guarded, too sharp for someone supposedly hungry for a corporate ladder. Like she’d built walls so high even she couldn’t see over them.

Walls interested me. Because walls meant something worth protecting inside.

When I told her she was late, I expected excuses. Instead, she steadied herself, apologized, and promised it wouldn’t happen again. No flustered rambling, no defensiveness. Control. Discipline. A soldier’s response.

I’d dismissed the others. I didn’t want noise. I wanted the truth. And the truth was clear: this woman had fire.

And fire was dangerous.

She spoke with conviction, not desperation. She didn’t grovel. She didn’t flatter. She told me she was exactly what I needed, and the strange part was, I almost believed her.

Almost.

But belief was a weakness I couldn’t afford. I’d learned that long ago, the hard way.

Still, as she walked out of that conference room, a strange thought anchored itself in my mind:

I want her where I can see her.

Not because I trusted her. The opposite. Because something

about Mara Vance didn’t add up. And until I knew what it was, I wasn’t letting her out of my sight.