I Want To Destroy Him

POV: Ava

"You have twenty minutes." He dropped into the chair across from me without hurrying, one arm draped over the back of it, studying me like he was trying to decide whether I was worth the time he'd already promised. "Talk."

I set the thumb drive on the table between us and slid it forward with two fingers, not quite letting go of it right away.

"You don't know me. I don't know you either, not really, only the version my husband's described over the years, and given what a spineless excuse for a man he's turned out to be, I'd bet half of that was fiction anyway. None of that matters. What matters is what's on here."

"And what is on there." His eyes dropped to the drive, then lifted back to me, unhurried.

"Information you'll want before tonight is over."

"Extortion, then." He said it flatly, testing the word rather than accusing me with it.

"The opposite, actually." I made myself hold his gaze. "My husband ruined me quietly, over years, and left the evidence of exactly how sitting on his own laptop like he never once imagined I'd go looking. I'm not here to threaten you, Mr. Keller. I'm here to ask you nicely, and probably bribe you if I have to. I want your help taking him and his mistress apart."

"Bribe me, huh." He smirked, biting his lip, his eyes turning a shade darker.

That look again.

He was looking at me like I was something he'd been waiting to be offered. It was ridiculous how much one small thing like that could undo me, how my whole body reacted to it before my mind caught up and told it to stop. God, what was I even thinking.

Get a hold of yourself, Ava.

You are not falling into bed with a man just to get back at Dillan, I told myself, firmly, uselessly.

"Bribe me with what, precisely." Something behind his eyes had sharpened, though his voice hadn't changed at all.

"Dillan Cross. My husband. Very soon, my ex-husband."

That landed.

He sat forward, the lazy posture gone in an instant, and I watched something shift across his face, surprise, quickly hidden, replaced by an interest he didn't bother disguising. His eyes moved over me, slow, from my face down and back up again, in no rush to pretend he wasn't looking.

"That idiot," he said, almost to himself, "is married to you."

I felt the heat climb up my throat before I could stop it. I bit down on the inside of my lip, hard enough to steady myself, and made myself keep talking instead of squirming under the weight of his attention.

He was doing it again, that same look fixed on me, unhurried, taking his time. How was I supposed to stay focused on the plan when he kept looking at me like that.

I kept reminding myself that all men were exactly this. Charming right up until they weren't. He probably had someone waiting somewhere, and wanted me to play a supporting role in whatever game he was running. I wasn't going to fall for it. I wasn't letting another man into my life. Strictly business. Nothing more.

Or should I, just this once.

Would it even count as revenge, if I did.

Someone had slept with my husband for a decade and raised his child in my house. A single night with a man like this, purely to even the score, that was practically justice.

No. That was stupid, and I knew it was stupid even as I thought it. He wasn't thinking about me that way. I was just a woman who hadn't been touched in years, filling in the silence with wishful thinking. I shook my head slightly, cleared my throat, and refocused.

"How does a man manage to ruin a woman who looks like you," he went on, "and still walk around like he's the injured party?"

"He moved his mistress into our house. He's letting her take the credit for ten years of my work as her own."

"Is she your twin. Some kind of doppelganger situation I should know about."

"No."

"Then I don't understand him at all." His gaze lingered a beat too long on my mouth before it came back up to my eyes. "You're not a woman a man forgets he's married to."

I looked away first. I always looked away first, and I hated that about myself, but there was something in the way he watched me, patient, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world to wait for me to look back, that made my stomach twist in a way I hadn't felt in over a decade.

Dillan had never once looked at me like that. Not on our wedding day. Not in any of the ten years after it. Certainly not in the years since he'd started measuring my worth in pounds and calling it honesty.

"I can't explain his reasoning to you," I said, forcing my voice level. "My best friend thinks he was dropped on his head as a child. I think he's a man who was never satisfied with what he had, so he decided he needed everyone else's too. He calls me fat. He calls me ugly. He kept me around because I was useful to him. He let a woman I trusted into our lives, let her steal my son, and made me raise his mistress's child as my own for ten years without ever telling me the truth. Do you want me to keep going, or is that enough for you to understand what kind of man we're discussing?"

"That's more than enough." For the first time, something almost gentle crossed his expression, there and gone before I could be sure I hadn't imagined it. "You could burn his name to the ground with what's on that drive alone. Why bring it to me instead of doing it yourself?"

"Because burning him is too easy. I want it to cost him everything he ever thought he'd built without me."

"What is it you actually want from me, then." He leaned back again, but his eyes stayed fixed on mine, and I felt the pull of that look settle low in my chest.

"Cancel the contract tonight. Give it to me instead. Every deal currently sitting under his name, I want moved to mine, so there's nothing left of mine for him to steal a second time. Everything you need is on that drive. If you want more, I'll get it for you. There's only one condition."

"There's always a condition with a woman like you."

"Ruin him completely. I don't care how. Take everything he thinks he owns and make him watch it disappear." I paused, and made myself say the next part slowly, so there'd be no confusion about it later. "Except one thing. Dillon has a trust fund waiting for him at eighteen. Whatever you do to Dillan and Sharon, that money stays untouched. The boy didn't choose the people who raised him, and he didn't make himself cruel, they did that, patiently, over years. I won't let him lose the one thing that was never really theirs to take from him in the first place."

Dominic went quiet, watching me with an intensity that made it hard to remember I was supposed to be the one asking for something.

"You're divorcing him," he said eventually. "No alimony, no settlement. Have you actually thought this through. If I take his business apart, you walk away with nothing from that side either. You understand that?"

"I understand it perfectly. I'd rather have nothing of his than owe him for a single cent of it. And I'm not exactly starting from zero. The software, the designs, all of it is mine. I have a feeling I'll build something better with you than I ever managed married to him."

He didn't answer right away. Instead he lifted two fingers, and one of the men stationed near the door produced a laptop from somewhere and set it down without a word. Dominic plugged the drive in and scrolled in silence, and every so often his eyes came up to find mine across the screen, something closer to disbelief flickering there each time, like he kept waiting for the well to run dry and it kept refusing to.

When he finally sat back, he began gathering his things the way a man does when he's already decided the meeting is over.

"Wait." I caught his hand before I'd fully decided to do it. "You're not even going to test me. See if I'm as good as I claim."

He went still, my fingers still wrapped around his, like my touch had cost him something he hadn't planned on spending. For half a second I caught it, something warm, almost unguarded, in his eyes, before the cold composure slid neatly back into place over it.

"That won't be necessary." His voice had dropped lower. "I already know you're good at this part. What I'm curious about is whether you'll actually see the rest of it through. You do know what they say about lovers' quarrels, don't you?"

"This isn't a lovers' quarrel." My voice came out sharper than I intended, though my eyes stayed locked on his, and neither of us looked away first this time. "We're getting a divorce, Mr. Keller. I'm leaving him."

For a long moment, neither of us moved. His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth again, and I caught myself biting my lip before I could stop it, my whole body far too aware of exactly how close he was sitting.

"Fine." A faint, unreadable smile finally broke across his face as he stood, straightening his jacket. "I'll pretend to believe you. I might even consider your offer, if you give me a real reason to cancel his contract tonight instead of tomorrow. Show me you mean every word of this. Go all the way." He paused at the door, glancing back once, his gaze holding mine a second longer than it needed to. "It's your show now. Let's see what you're actually capable of."

Then he was gone, and I sat there long after the door closed, my hand still warm where his had been, my heart doing something I hadn't let it do in ten years.

Let's see, then, I thought, and for the first time since I'd stood sobbing in my own driveway, the thought didn't feel like it was only about revenge anymore.