Chapter 1: Destroy everything

Jason's POV

The boardroom went silent the moment I walked in with my assistant right behind me.

Four years ago, I couldn't even get a bank to return my calls.

But now I didn't have to say a word. All I had to do was enter the room, and twelve grown men who managed departments generating millions of dollars would stop talking mid-sentence like a bunch of five-year-olds caught doing something wrong.

They all stood up, most of them adjusting their suits. “Good afternoon, Mr. Cross.”

I took my seat at the head of the table. And as usual, nobody sat until I did.

Daniel, my assistant, cleared his throat as he set the paperwork right in front of me.

“Mr. Cross,” he said. “We have gone through the last company standing in the way of our expansion into the East Coast design market.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Which company?”

Daniel tapped his tablet, and the screen behind him changed.

The name was displayed boldly on the screen, Lumina Creative Group.

I already knew the name. I had known it for months, actually, ever since my acquisitions team first flagged it as the one boutique firm standing between Cross Group from having total control of the design and branding sector on the East Coast.

The company was small, scrappy, and the person at the top was stubborn to the core — stubborn to the point that they rejected numerous offers from my company, the kind of offers most companies wished for.

“They have turned down three buyout offers,” Daniel continued. “Even when each one is more generous than the last.”

“Who runs it?” I asked, raising my brows slightly.

Daniel clicked to the next slide, and that's when I saw it.

The picture of the woman who had destroyed my life four years ago, and walked away like what we had didn't matter.

Aria Bennett.

She was no longer the fragile ballerina who left me four years ago; she was now the CEO and Founder of Lumina Creative Group. And knowing it was her company made me want to destroy it the more and take it away from her.

I stared at the photo longer than I should have, noticing small details I shouldn’t even care about. Somehow, it was her hair that caught my attention more than anything else.

She had cut it. It used to fall past her shoulders, and I remembered the way it felt between my fingers when I kissed her.

But now it barely reached her jaw. It was short and made her look different.

It looked like the woman staring back at me from the corporate photo was someone I had never known.

But her eyes hadn’t changed one bit. It was still those impossible ocean blue eyes that used to warm my heart in less than a second.

I felt my jaw tighten before I even realized I’d clenched it.

“Mr. Cross, did you want us to move forward with the check, or—”

“Everyone out,” I said, cutting him off. “ I need a minute. Now.”

The room fell silent. Then the chairs began to scrape across the floor as the twelve men grabbed their laptops and folders and left without questioning me.

Daniel stopped by the door. “Sir—”

“That means you too.”

The door clicked shut behind Daniel as he left.

I sat there alone with her face on the screen, and for a moment, I let myself remember everything.

The first thing that came to my mind wasn’t the fight. Neither was it her face when she said the words. Instead, what came back first, what always came back first, was the silence and how I felt just after she left.

I remembered how the apartment we had shared for two years suddenly became mine again.

It hurt every time I was brushing my teeth, but her toothbrush was no longer in the cup by the sink.

I could never forget when I stood in the kitchen at two in the morning, staring at the space on the counter where her favorite mug used to be.

That was the first time in my life I understood what it meant for a person to walk away from my life without a proper goodbye.

I never knew why she left me at first. But a few months later, my mom revealed everything to me.

She told me how Aria had accepted fifty thousand dollars from her to leave my life for good. I always thought that she wasn’t the type who was after my family's money, but I turned out to be wrong about her.

All she needed was a few thousand dollars for her true color to finally show.

When I realized the truth, I never went looking for Aria to explain anything to me. There was no need for that, not when she'd taken the money and left me.

A knock pulled me from my thoughts. The door opened slightly, and Daniel looked in.

“Sir, I am sorry to interrupt, but the board needs a decision by the end of the day.”

“Bring everyone back in,” I told him, closing the folder and pushing it aside.

“Okay”, he replied and left.

A few minutes later, the board members were back in the room and took their seats. They looked uneasy, but no one asked why I had sent them away in the first place.

I waited for the last person to sit before I spoke.

“Draft the offer,” I said. “Whatever it takes. I want Lumina Creative Group by the end of the quarter.”

“She’s turned down every offer so far, sir.” Daniel hesitated, then continued. “Some sources say she’d rather shut the company down than sell it to a firm like ours.”

I almost smiled at that.

I don’t know why, but the thought of her stubbornness, even to the point of self-destruction, stirred something in me.

I pulled the folder back toward me, the one with her company profile, and her photo at the top.

“Destroy everything she built. I don't care what it takes.” I said, closing the folder.