CHAPTER 3: Trap

I didn't go home to Damian that night. I sat in my car in the hospital parking lot, staring at Julian's text message: Meet me at the old penthouse. Bring the divorce papers. Let's talk about a truce.

It was a trap. Of course it was a trap.

But my mother was sleeping peacefully for the first time in months because Julian had paid for her morphine drip.

I went.

The penthouse looked exactly the same. Cold marble. Empty hallways. The bedroom where I'd cried myself to sleep a hundred times. Julian stood by the window, backlit by city lights. He looked almost handsome.

"You came," he said again.

"Don't sound so surprised. You held my mother hostage with a checkbook."

He flinched. "That's not—I was trying to help."

"You were trying to buy me."

He turned. His eyes were wet. Fake, I told myself. All of it is fake.

"I'll give you Kael Corp," he said suddenly.

I blinked. "What?"

"I've been building a hostile takeover bid for months. I have enough dirt on Damian to put him in prison for ten years. Tax evasion, fraud, maybe even worse. You help me take his company, and I'll give you forty percent. You'll be a billionaire. You can save your mother a hundred times over."

My heart hammered. This was new. Julian had never played the long game like this.

"What's the catch?" I asked.

"The catch," he said, walking toward me until his chest almost touched mine, "is that you marry me again. In public. For real this time. No more hiding. You'll be Elara Thorne, queen of both empires."

I looked into his eyes. And for one awful, traitorous second—I remembered the good days. The way he'd hold me after a nightmare. The way he'd whisper "mine" into my hair.

Then I remembered the divorce papers. The cold hum of the penthouse. The silence.

"If I say no?" I whispered.

Julian's hand cupped my cheek. Gentle. Menacing.

"Then your mother loses her treatment tomorrow. And I ruin Damian. And you go back to being a librarian with nothing."

I had two choices. Betray Damian—the only man who'd ever treated me like an equal—or lose my mother.

But I had a third choice.

One Julian didn't see coming.

I pulled a small recorder from my bra. The red light was blinking.

"I have everything," I said softly. "The bribe. The threat to my mother. The hostile takeover plot. It's all on this drive, backed up to three different servers. Touch me, touch Damian, or touch my mother—and I release it all to the SEC, the FBI, and every news outlet in the country."

Julian's face went white. Then red. Then purple.

"You little—"

I stepped back, just out of his reach. "I learned from the best, Julian. You taught me that love is just leverage. Well, now I have the leverage."

I turned and walked to the door. He didn't follow.

But as I reached for the handle, my phone buzzed.

Damian: Get out of there. Now. He's not alone.

I looked up.

The door handle turned on its own.

And three men in black masks stepped inside.