Deal With The Ex's Enemy

Chapter 3

Shay's POV

The man didn’t move. He stood at the foot of my hospital bed like a monolith of dark silk and cold intent. The silence in the room wasn't peaceful; it was heavy, the kind of silence that precedes a storm or a sentencing.

"Redemption?" I whispered, the word catching on the jagged edges of my grief. My voice sounded like someone else’s, thin, brittle, and hollowed out by the loss of my child. "You don't even know me."

"I know that you spent three years as the ghostwriter of Massimo Falcone’s success," the man said. His voice was a rich baritone, smooth as aged whiskey but cold as the ice within it.

"I know you balanced books that didn't add up, negotiated contracts he was too arrogant to see the flaws in, and lived on coffee and devotion while he prepared to trade you in for a better model."

He stepped closer, and the light from the hallway caught the sharp, predatory curve of his jaw. "I know that tonight, you lost everything. Your husband. Your dignity. Your child."

The mention of the baby was like a fresh blade across my skin. I flinched, my fingers curling into the thin hospital sheets until my knuckles turned white.

The monitor beside me began to beep faster, a rhythmic, frantic pulse that betrayed my internal chaos.

"Who are you?" I demanded, my voice gaining a tremor of defensive rage. "How do you know all of this?"

"My name is Lucien Valois."

The name hit the room like a physical weight. Even in my sheltered life as Massimo’s shadow, I knew that name. Lucien Valois.

The financier they called the King of Shadows. He didn't build companies; he bought them, dismantled them, and sold the pieces for a profit that could fund a small nation. He was the only man Massimo Falcone had ever spoken of with a mixture of fear and genuine hatred.

"You’re his rival," I breathed.

"I am his predator," Lucien corrected calmly. He pulled a chair to the side of the bed, sitting with a grace that felt lethal. He didn't look at me with the pity the doctor had shown.

He looked at me the way an engineer looks at a broken machine that still has a valuable engine. "And right now, Shay, you are the most dangerous weapon I have ever found lying in the dirt."

"I'm not a weapon," I choked out, a sob finally breaking through. "I'm nothing. I have no money, no family, and my body is broken. Look at me!"

I gestured to the machines, the tubes, and the crimson stain I could still feel mentally, if not physically on my soul.

Lucien leaned forward, his steel-grey eyes locking onto mine. He didn't flinch from my tears.

"You are nothing if you choose to die in this bed. Massimo Falcone expects you to crawl away into a hole and wither. He expects you to spend the rest of your life crying over a man who called you a 'used rag' in front of the world's elite."

The memory of Massimo’s laugh, the way he looked at Elena while I bled on the marble flashed behind my eyes. The pain in my abdomen flared, a phantom kick from a life that would never be.

"He took my baby," I whispered, the words dark and poisonous.

"He did," Lucien said. "And he is currently at the Pierre Hotel, toasting to his new wife and a ten-billion-dollar valuation. While you are here, he is being photographed. He is being celebrated. He has already forgotten your name."

The rage was a small spark at first. A tiny, flickering coal in the center of my chest. But Lucien’s words were like oxygen, feeding the fire until it roared.

"What do you want?" I asked, my voice suddenly flat.

Lucien straightened his tie, his expression unreadable. "I want the Falcone empire. I want it leveled. I want the name turned into a curse in the financial world. But I don't just want his money. I want his spirit. I want him to watch as everything he thinks he owns is stripped away by the very woman he discarded."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"I get the satisfaction of winning. And," he paused, a ghost of a smile touching his lips, "I get a partner who knows the Falcone's back-door encryptions better than anyone alive."

He stood up and pulled a thick, leather-bound folder from his jacket. He laid it on my lap.

"In here is a new identity. Alessia Valois. My ward. A woman with an Ivy League pedigree, a multi-million dollar trust fund, and a face that with a little bit of medical refinement, no one will associate with the mousy girl who followed Massimo Falcone like a lost puppy."

I stared at the folder. It felt heavy. It felt like a coffin for the old Shay.

"I will provide the doctors," Lucien continued. "The trainers. The capital. You will spend a year in Zurich. You will learn to walk, speak, and kill, financially speaking like a Valois. You will become a woman Massimo Falcone would sell his soul to touch. And when he finally begs for your hand, you will use it to wrap around his throat."

I looked up at him. "Why me? You could hire anyone."

"Because a professional lacks the one thing that makes a plan foolproof," Lucien said, his eyes darkening.

"Hate. A professional wants to get paid. A woman who lost her child wants blood. I’ll take the blood."

I looked down at my hands. They were trembling. I thought of Massimo’s mother, Catherine, and her sneer.

I thought of Elena’s golden hair. I thought of the way the security guard had thrown me like I was literal trash.

If I stayed as Shay, I would be a victim. A headline in a gossip rag for one day, forgotten the next.

If I became Alessia... I would be a ghost. A nightmare.

"The divorce," I said, my voice cold. "He thinks the marriage was fake. His mother said the papers were shredded."

Lucien pulled a small, digital drive from his pocket. "The papers weren't shredded. I have the originals. My people pulled them from the Falcone safe an hour after you were brought here. You are legally his wife, Shay. Which means half of everything he built is already yours. He just doesn't know it yet."

A jagged, dark laugh escaped my throat. It felt like glass, but it was the most honest thing I’d felt in years.

"I have conditions," I said, looking Lucien in the eye.

"Tell me."

"I don't just want his money. I want him to love me again. Truly, desperately, obsessively. I want him to realize that I am the only thing he ever needed. I want him to chase me across continents. I want him to crawl on his knees."

I leaned back into the pillow, the pain in my body feeling like fuel instead of a burden.

"And then," I whispered, "when he is at his weakest, when he thinks he has finally won me back... I want to be the one who tells him he’s nothing but a used rag."

Lucien’s smile this time was real, sharp, predatory, and satisfied. He reached out a hand.

"Welcome to the family, Alessia."

I took his hand. His skin was cold, but his grip was solid. As I shook it, the monitors in the room settled into a steady, rhythmic hum. The girl who loved Massimo Falcone had died on that marble floor.

The woman who would destroy him was just beginning to breathe.