Chapter Fifteen: Face the Family

I sat in the west drawing room, fingers clenched tight around the carved edge of the armrest, pretending like I wasn’t unraveling inside my own skin.

The walls around me were tall, elegant, unbothered.

I envied them.

Dominic stood near the window, phone in one hand, a single brow lifted as he read something. Probably another headline. Or maybe a shareholder report. Or a death threat. With him, it was all the same.

He ended the call and looked at me like he’d been waiting for me to break.

I didn’t.

Not yet.

He took two steps toward me, then three. Casual. Like he wasn’t about to drop a bomb.

“We push back,” he said.

My lips parted. “How?”

He didn’t blink. “What do you want?”

The question hit me like a slap.

I blinked once, slow. Then lifted my chin.

“I never want to lose anything again,” I said quietly. “I never want the Reynolds family to take what’s mine. Ever again.”

His mouth twitched—something close to approval.

“Then you want revenge,” he said. “Start with the boardroom.”

I stared at him.

He began to pace, slow and deliberate. “There’s a shareholder meeting in seventy-two hours. Your shares are still tied to the marriage contract. They think they’ve found a loophole. That by selling them under scandal, they can lock you out completely.”

My chest tightened.

“But they’re wrong,” he said. “There’s an older clause. One they buried. It says a spouse has the right to purchase additional shares under hostile pressure.”

I swallowed. “Purchase?”

“You’ll be at the meeting. With one of the most vicious corporate attorneys on the continent. My team’s already drafted the motion. The moment they propose a sale—” he made a slicing motion with his hand—“you counter. You buy in. You become a controlling shareholder.”

I blinked. “They won’t allow it.”

“They won’t have a choice.”

My breath caught.

Dominic moved closer, his tone like a scalpel.

“Once you’re in, every decision they make—from dividends to leadership votes—will need your signature. Every power play they’ve used against you will collapse. You won’t just survive them, Scarlett.”

His voice dropped lower.

“You’ll own them.”

I stared at him.

This wasn’t a plan. It was a bloodbath.

And I wanted it.

But something inside me flinched.

Because if I stepped into that room—if I stood in front of them all—I’d have to face more than a family.

I’d have to face myself.

I hesitated.

And that’s when it hit me.

The memory.

It crashed over me like cold water, thick and suffocating.

—

It came back like blood through old bandages.

The memory.

Not one moment—but a chain of them, sharp and unrelenting, like pearls strung on wire.

It was a Tuesday.

I remember that because the housekeeper had just laid fresh orchids on the table—white, perfect, already wilting.

I had spilled tea on the napkin beside me. My hand had been shaking again.

Blake had looked at me with a disgust that could melt steel.

“You don’t even bleed like a real woman,” he muttered, barely moving his lips.

His father didn’t blink.

His mother didn't flinch.

She just sipped her soup and said, “At least she doesn’t talk back anymore.”

No one laughed.

No one needed to.

The silence after their words was always the worst part. The way everyone just kept eating. Forks scraping porcelain. Champagne fizzing in untouched glasses. Me—silent. Small. Drowning in air.

That night, I had gone to the guest room because Blake told me my presence in the master bedroom gave him headaches.

I found the sheets damp. The window cracked open. Cold air spilling in like an accusation.

I didn’t cry. I stopped doing that months ago. Maybe longer.

But when I slipped under the covers, I found a note on the pillow.

Just two words.

“Waste of space.”

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t.

Later that week, I missed a family brunch because I fainted in the shower. No one asked why. No one knocked.

The next day, Blake’s mother told the board of trustees I was “mentally unstable.”

Blake told the press I was infertile—before we even got the results.

When I finally got the courage to ask for a second medical opinion, his father called me a “resource drain.”

“You’ve contributed nothing to this family,” he said, eyes sharp as crystal. “Not a child. Not profit. You’re decoration with a heartbeat.”

One night, I screamed.

I don’t even remember why. Maybe because the walls were too white. Or because my chest wouldn’t stop tightening. Or because someone told me I was lucky to be there.

I screamed until my throat tore. Until my voice cracked into something raw and hoarse and unrecognizable.

No one came.

They said I was dramatic.

“Your kind always is,” his mother said the next morning, stirring her coffee like my pain was a mild inconvenience.

And the worst part?

I started to believe them.

That I was nothing.

That I deserved it.

That love was something you earned by staying quiet, staying still, staying small.

That I was the ghost in a house full of wolves.

And that if I disappeared, the only thing they’d miss was the sound of their own cruelty echoing back unanswered.

—

I blinked hard.

The drawing room faded back into view.

My heart was racing. My throat closed. I couldn’t breathe. I was still trapped in that old life, and no mansion, no diamond ring, no Blackwood contract could save me from the girl who still lived inside my bones.

Dominic was watching me now.

Really watching.

For once, his voice softened.

“I won’t let them touch you.”

I looked at him.

And my voice came out small. Raw.

“Who protects me from you?”

The air between us cracked.

His gaze changed—sharpened, darkened.

He stepped forward.

One step. Two.

Until he was close enough to touch but didn’t.

His voice was velvet wrapped around fire. “No one.”

I sucked in a breath. His heat surrounded me.

He lifted one hand—slowly, deliberately—and traced the edge of my jaw with his knuckle. Not possessive. Not gentle. Just present. Like he could feel the war I was fighting inside myself.

“And that scares you, doesn’t it?” he whispered.

I hated that my breath hitched.

“You’re used to pain,” he said. “But power? That’s new. And you don’t know what to do with it.”

I wanted to shove him. I wanted to run.

But my feet didn’t move.

He leaned closer, lips just beside my ear.

“I don’t need to hurt you to break you,” he said. “All I have to do is give you everything you asked for.”

I shivered.

His hand dropped.

He stepped back.

And just like that—he was gone. Out the door. Silent.

Leaving me in the middle of a room full of light I couldn’t feel.

I stood there, alone.

Then my knees buckled.

And I sank to the floor like a woman who’d just survived a storm.

But only just.