The storm outside battered the city, rain hammering against the mansion windows like a warning drumbeat. Inside Greg’s office, the air was taut with calm menace. Every breath, every movement was measured, precise, lethal.Vanessa lingered in the corner, arms crossed, jaw tight. She had tried to stop him before, but now she knew it was impossible. He wasn’t just angry. He wasn’t broken. He was alive, and in a way that terrified her. Controlled. Calculated. Predatory.Greg leaned back in his leather chair, phone in hand, scrolling through encrypted messages from a driver he had bribed earlier. “Eyes are in place,” he murmured, voice low and deliberate. “Vendors, contractors… delivery men. Every gate. Every window… monitored.”Vanessa swallowed hard. “Greg… you’re turning her life into a cage. Watching her every move…”“No cage,” he cut in sharply, eyes narrowing. “This is the prelude. Every empire has cracks. Every crack has a seam. I am patient. Calculating. Subtle. And tonight… I have
The storm outside had turned violent, rain hammering against the mansion windows like drumbeats announcing a war. Inside, the office was quiet, too quiet, except for the faint hum of the city beyond and the soft vibration of Greg’s phone on the mahogany desk.Vanessa lingered in the corner, arms crossed, jaw tight. She had tried to stop him, to pull him back from the edge, but every second she watched him now, she realized it was impossible. He wasn’t just angry. He wasn’t broken. He was alive in a way that terrified her, controlled, precise, and utterly lethal.Greg picked up his phone, scrolling through the encrypted messages from the driver he had bribed earlier. His fingers moved deliberately, almost reverently, as if caressing a weapon. “Eyes are in place,” he murmured. “Vendors, contractors… delivery men. Every gate. Every window. Every access point… monitored.”Vanessa’s voice trembled, almost a whisper: “Greg… you’re… this is madness. You’re turning her life into a cage, watch
“Do you think she even knows what she did to me?” Greg muttered, voice low, trembling with controlled fury. He crushed a photo of Lucy in his fist, the glossy edges cutting slightly into his palm. “Do you think she realizes that while she was building her empire, I was drowning in the shadows she left behind?”Vanessa entered quietly, her presence almost tentative. She had hoped to intervene before he fully lost himself, but the man before her wasn’t just angry, he was transformed. There was a predator’s calm in his movements, a cruel precision in his stare.“Greg…” she whispered, stepping closer.“Vanessa, listen,” he said, dragging a finger across a set of photographs spread across the desk. “You think I’m spiraling. You think I’m obsessed. No. This isn’t about love anymore. This is about balance. This is about teaching her, Lucy Bennett, that she doesn’t control me. That she never did.”Vanessa swallowed, trying to steady herself. “But Greg… she’s not your enemy. She’s… she’s”“She
At midnight, the mansion was silent. Outside, the rain hadn’t stopped since dusk, beating against the tall windows in a rhythm that sounded like war drums.Greg sat in his office, a single lamp spilling golden light across the mahogany desk. Every other part of the room was swallowed in darkness, but the desk was alive with ghosts. Dozens of photographs lay scattered, Lucy smiling at a gala, Lucy standing proudly beside Austin DiMarco, Lucy caught mid-laugh in the glow of chandeliers. Each picture was a blade, slicing into him, reopening wounds that should have scarred by now but hadn’t.His hands no longer trembled. They were steady, deliberate, as if he were a surgeon preparing for an operation. He lifted one of the photographs, his thumb brushing across her face.“You took everything from me, Lucy,” he whispered, the words scraping his throat raw.He leaned back, cigarette smoke curling from his lips, his eyes never leaving her image. His gaze was a predator’s, fixed, unblinking, h
“Not because I want you,” he whispered, leaning close, “but because you made me believe you were just a common girl… when you were a dynasty’s daughter all along. That lie… that insult… will cost you everything.”Then he sat back, eyes gleaming with cruel satisfaction. The hunger wasn’t for her love anymore. It was for the empire she had been born into, the empire he was now determined to bleed dry.Vanessa caught him more than once, his harsh temper flaring over nothing, the sharp scent of cigarette smoke clinging to his shirts though he hadn’t touched a pack in years, his sudden late nights where he came home with eyes that looked like a man possessed.That night, she finally snapped. She was waiting in the living room when he walked in, his jacket still damp from the rain. Her arms folded tight across her chest, her jaw set, her eyes flashing like she’d rehearsed this fight a hundred times in her head.“Where have you been?” she demanded, her voice shaking with anger, but also fear
Over the next few days, Greg became a shadow.Everywhere Lucy went, he was already watching. He wasn’t obsessed, no, obsession was for the weak. What he had was sharper, colder. Calculated.At the charity gala, Greg sat in a rented black suit, perfectly tailored but borrowed in prestige, blending seamlessly into the sea of tuxedos. The chandeliers spilled golden light across the room, reflecting off polished marble floors and glinting glassware. Champagne flutes clinked like distant bells, laughter rising and falling in waves, the hum of the crowd masking the precise beat of his own pulse.His eyes never left her. Lucy. Draped in a gown that shimmered with every movement, her hair cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall of black silk. That smile, once private, once reserved only for him, now radiated effortlessly across the room, traded for influence, recognition, power. Every laugh she offered to the socialites, every tilt of her head, every subtle flick of her hand was a calcul