CHAPTER ONE: The Ghost My Ex Made

They say you can't outrun your past but my ex who destroyed my life stands in front of me five years after I swore revenge. 

After he destroyed me, I've been running from my past for five years, three months, and fourteen days. 

I have a new name, Abigail Monroe instead of Abigail Hale and new hair, almost black, nothing like the honey-blonde girl who used to exist.

I'd recently come back to Boston where it all happened, so I could plan how I would bring him and take away everything he loves. 

I thought I was safe and invincible so had time to organise my plans. 

The first sign something's shifted is the silence. One moment, the office at meridian corp hums with the usual keyboards clicking and phones ringing.

The next minute it's like someone's hit mute on the entire floor.

I look up from my quarterly report, that's when I see him. 

Dominic Blackwood, the ex who almost made me commit suicide is standing twenty feet from my desk, and he's staring directly at me.

He looks the same. Older, maybe and there are lines around his eyes that weren't there before, a hardness to his jaw that might be new. His hair is still that perfect shade of dark brown that looks black in certain light and  perfectly cut. Still the kind of handsome that makes grown women stupid.

Still the man who taught me what love felt like, what destruction felt like and now what the insane need for revenge feels like 

Our eyes lock as I watch him look at me with shock in his eyes

I force my eyes back to my computer screen and my hands are shaking, so I press them flat against my desk trying to look busy typing random letters. 

Dominic Blackwood doesn't forget faces, especially the woman he was totally obsessed with years ago right up until the moment he chose his empire over me.

But I'm not that girl anymore who needed his approval and melted under his attention who was willing to do anything to make sure he looked at only her. 

That girl died five years ago in a ballroom full of Manhattan's elite, when Dominic Blackwood stood at a microphone and announced his engagement to Victoria Ashford while his girlfriend watched from the crowd in a dress he'd bought her. And that stupid girl was me. 

“What can I do for you sir?” I ask him to break the silence but he doesn't reply, he just walks past me. 

I pull up my encrypted messaging app and I text Adrian. Earlier I discovered that I wasn't alone in my journey for revenge, Adrian, Dominic's brother who everyone thinks is dead joins me too for revenge against his family because he was almost killed for his father's crime and it was framed to loom like an accident. 

Me: He saw me.

I stare at the screen, waiting. Three dots appear 

Adrian: And…

Me: He knows.

Adrian: Are you sure?

Me: Yes.

Adrian: Fuck, okay. Stick to the plan, you're Abigail Monroe and you've worked at Meridian for six months. All you have to do is let him want you again and we'll use it to bring him down 

Me: I'm working on it.

I delete the messages immediately.

"Oh my God, did you see him?"

Elena Martinez practically vibrates with excitement as she rolls her chair over from the neighboring desk. She's sweet, mid-twenties, thinks the world is still exciting but she has no idea who I really am, what I'm really doing here.

No one does except Adrian.

"See who?" I ask, even though I know what she means. 

"Dominic Blackwood! Dominic Blackwood! He was just here, and Abby, he was staring right at you. Like, staring, staring."

"I have one of those faces."

"Are you kidding? He looked at you like you were the only person in the room. Do you know him?"

I know we had been in a relationship for 2 years but he stood in front of five hundred people and called me a desperate gold digger who'd tried to trap him into a relationship.

I know he had his lawyers paint me as a blackmailer, a social climber and a whore.

I know he evicted me from the apartment he'd set me up in, had me blacklisted from every company in Manhattan, and then married Victoria Ashford two months later like I'd never existed.

I know he destroyed my life and never lost a single night of sleep over it.

"No," I say to Elena.  "I've never met him."

She buys it because why wouldn't she? To her, I'm 

just Abby Monroe, competent project manager with a boring background and a forgettable face.

If only.

Two hours later, an email arrives. It's from the boss's office calling me without a detailed reason and I know damn well it'd probably be Dominic 

I've been instructed to show up there tomorrow without a reason. 

I stare at the email until the words blur together. Then I close my laptop, grab my bag, and leave. 

The subway is crowded as I press my face against the cool window and finally let myself feel the fear I've been holding back since the moment our eyes met.

Him showing up unexpectedly will ruin the plan 

The revenge plot Adrian and I have been carefully constructing for the past six months. Those were always long shots anyway, the kind of schemes that look good on paper but fall apart under pressure.

Also the life I built where I pick up my son from daycare and make him dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets for dinner and read him stories about brave knights who always win in the end.

The plan is simple: occupy his attention and steal company secrets while Adrian uses his resources to release the information and make sure I come out clean. That's the first part..

I'll make sure I take his attention to the point where his wife asks him for a divorce, I'll play him to the point where he puts himself on his knees for me and that would be the beginning of everything. 

I don't care what happens when the secrets are released and after the public scandal and the loss of the empire he chose over me I'll show him his son 

and watch me take Ethan from him again 

But Dominic doesn't know I have his son, and I plan to keep it that way as I destroy his life just like he did to me.