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Chapter Fifteen: Property of Ashcroft
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2026-01-27 03:26:51The door clicks shut with a sound like a guillotine.
Rhea stays rooted to the spot, her heart hammering against ribs that still feel the phantom pressure of Dominic’s grip from the night before.
The office is quiet - too quiet - filled only with the low, clinical whir of the air conditioning and the oppressive scent of Dominic’s power. It is a mixture of expensive sandalwood and cold, hard steel.
Dominic doesn't go to his desk. He walks to the floor-to-ceiling window, a man looking out over the city he has conquered. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two devices. One is his: a sleek, black encrypted phone. The other is hers.
He turns her phone over in his hand, mocking it like a confiscated toy.
"He’s a very emotional young man, isn't he?" Dominic asks. His voice is conversational, as if they are discussing the weather rather than a man's life.
"He sent three more messages after you fell asleep. He seems to think you’re in some kind of distress."
"He's just worried sir," Rhea whispers, her voice trembling as she watches his thumb stroke the screen of her private life. "He doesn't deserve to be a target, Mr. Ashcroft. He hasn't done anything wrong."
"He looked at what belongs to me," Dominic snaps, spinning around. His eyes are no longer calm; they are a storm of possessive fury, dark and bottomless. "That is the only 'wrong' that matters in this room."
He stalks toward her, the distance shrinking until she has to crane her neck just to meet his lethal gaze. He is a mountain of tailored wool and cold intent.
He holds up her phone, his thumb swiping across the screen with a casual cruelty. "I went through your logs, Fragile. Your messages. Your photos. I see the way you talk to him. You’re polite. You’re kind. You’re... soft."
He leans in, his face so close she can feel the cold edge of his breath against her lips. "You don't get to be soft with anyone but me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," she whimpers, the words tasting like ash in her mouth.
"I’m going to make this very simple for you." He taps a button on his own phone and holds the screen up to her face. It is a draft in his internal email, addressed to HR.
Subject: Immediate Termination of Julian Miller – Gross Misconduct.
Rhea’s breath hitches, a sob catching in her chest. "No...Mr. Ashcroft, you can't. He’s done nothing. He has parents to support, a life—"
"I don't need a reason to fire a Deputy EA. I can ruin his career with a single click. I can make sure no firm in this city - or any city - ever looks at his resume again."
He pauses, his thumb hovering over the 'Send' button like a god deciding the fate of a mortal. "Unless you give me a reason not to."
"Anything," she gasps, instinctively reaching for his arm before remembering the rule. She pulls her hand back as if burned by the mere thought of his touch. "What do you want, sir?"
A slow, cruel smirk pulls at Dominic's lips. It isn't the smile of a lover; it is the smile of a hunter who has cornered his prey.
"I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make him stop clinging to you. I want him to lose interest. I want him to look at you and see someone he doesn't recognize."
He reaches out, his fingers sliding under the high collar of her plum dress. He traces the dark, angry mark he left on her collarbone, his touch a terrifying mixture of searing heat and numbing ice.
"If, after twenty-four hours, he still mentions wanting you... if he still thinks he has a chance... I will make sure he becomes a ghost in this industry. Jobless. Unemployable. Broken."
Rhea closes her eyes, a single tear escaping and soaking into the knit fabric of the dress he has chosen for her.
She is being forced to butcher the only person who actually cares for her, to kill the only spark of light in her life, just to keep him from being crushed by the monster in front of her.
"And your phone?" Dominic says, pocketing it again. "I’m keeping it. If you need to make a call, you’ll do it from my desk, under my supervision. From now on, your world starts and ends with me."
He walks to his chair and sits, gesturing dismissively toward the stack of files on the edge of his desk. "Now, get to work. We have a merger to finalize. And Fragile?"
She looks up, her eyes red and raw, her vision blurred behind her glasses.
"You’re coming home with me this evening," he says, his voice dropping into a dark, promised growl that promises no sleep. "I want to see if I can make you go even crazier tonight."
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Dominic pushes the heavy doors open, and the lights comes to life, revealing a space that is less of a bedroom and more of a private sanctuary of excess.Rhea stumbles slightly as he leads her inside. The room is vast, dominated by a king-sized bed draped in charcoal silk, but it is the perimeter that stops her heart. To the left, a walk-in closet the size of her entire old apartment stands open.Rows of designer dresses - Hermès, Chanel, Dior - hang like silent sentinels, arranged by color from softest cream to the deepest black. Below them, hundreds of pairs of shoes glitter under individual spotlights. On the marble center island, gold-lined drawers are partially open, revealing watches that cost more than her father’s surgery and necklaces dripping with diamonds that catch the light, throwing fractured rainbows across the ceiling.Dominic steps toward a sleek glass console and picks up a heavy, leather-bound key fob. He drops it into her palm, the weight of it forcing her hand do
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The heavy, resonant thud of the private elevator is the only warning Rhea receives.She is sitting on the edge of the charcoal-colored sofa, her fingers unconsciously covering the gold cuff as if she can hide the shame of it. When Dominic strides into the room, he is a vision of absolute, terrifying perfection. His charcoal suit is without a single crease. He carries the atmospheric weight of a man who has spent the day dismantling empires, and now he has come home to inspect his most exquisite acquisition.Sarah stands at attention immediately, her posture rigid. "Mr. Ashcroft."Dominic’s eyes don't flicker toward the guard. They are locked on Rhea, dark and unreadable, twin pits of obsidian that swallow the light in the room. He stops in the center of the sprawling penthouse, the silence stretching until the tension becomes a physical ache, a pressure in Rhea’s lungs that makes breathing feel like a sin."Sarah," Dominic says, his voice a low, smooth drawl that vibrates against the
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Rhea wakes to a silence so heavy it feels physical.The evening sun slices through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bedroom, warm but unforgiving. Her body aches; a deep, throbbing reminder of the kitchen counter and the marks Dominic left on her skin. She is tucked under Egyptian cotton sheets that feel like a shroud. He is gone, but his scent - charcoal, expensive bourbon, and power - lingers on the pillow next to her.She sits up slowly, her heart skipping a beat as she remembers her burner phone. She practically falls out of bed, crawling toward the nightstand where she’d hidden it in a small gap behind the drawer. Her fingers graze the cold plastic.Thank God. He doesn't know. He didn’t check her bag earlier.She hides the phone back in its crevice and stands, wrapping herself in a robe she found in the closet. She needs water. She needs to feel like a human being again.As she enters the vast, open-plan living area, she stops dead.The kitchen island where he had broken her
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Dominic doesn't wait for her to recover from the sting of his palm. Before her cries can even fade into the high ceilings, he hooks his arms under her dampness and hauls her up. He spins her around, her feet dangling for a terrifying second before he slams her down onto the edge of the kitchen island.The cold marble bites into the backs of her thighs, but the heat of Dominic’s finger moving between her legs is a furnace."Look at me," he commands, his voice a low, jagged rasp.Rhea’s eyeglasses are askew, her eyes blurred with tears and raw shock. She tries to push him away, her hands landing on his chest, but it’s like trying to move a mountain. He’s already unbuckled his belt, the metallic click sounding like a death knell in the silence of the apartment."You wanted to make a decision for yourself?" he growls, his hands moving to her breasts, crushing them through the fabric of her blouse with a punishing grip. "You wanted to end things?""Sir, please…it’s too much," she gasps, h
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“Remove all your underwear.”Dominic’s voice is a flat, clinical vibration in the cramped luxury of the car back seat. He doesn't look up from his phone. The blue light of the screen carves out the sharp, merciless angles of his face, making him look less like a man and more like a statue.Rhea freezes, her heart thudding against her ribs. “Here?” she whispers, her voice cracking.“Unless you’d prefer to do it on the sidewalk when we arrive,” he replies. He still doesn't glance at her. His thumb swipes across the screen; cold, methodical, and utterly detached.Rhea’s hands shake as she reaches under her skirt. The car is moving, the world outside the tinted windows blurring, but inside, the air is thick with the scent of his expensive cologne and her own rising panic. She peels the lace down her legs, feeling the sudden, biting chill of the leather against her bare skin.She fumbles with her blouse next, slipping her arms out just enough to unhook her bra. She slides it off and qui
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Rhea sits on the edge of her bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. The house feels smaller tonight with her father at the hospital, while she is crowded by the oppressive memory of Dominic’s touch. As he demanded, she had surrendered her primary phone to him like a disarmed soldier. In return, he’d handed her a brand-new device - sleek, expensive, and almost certainly a digital cage. She knows better than to touch it. Every text, every GPS ping, every breath she takes near that phone likely feeds directly back to his desk.She reaches under her pillow and pulls out her real lifeline: a burner phone she bought in cash.Her fingers tremble as she dials Julian’s number. He picks up on the first ring, his voice a sudden, warm burst of reality in her cold room.“Hey, babe. How are you doing?”Julian’s voice is steady, a calm harbor. Rhea closes her eyes, hunching her shoulders as if Dominic’s shadow is looming over her shoulder, listening through the walls.“I’m good,” she whisper
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