On His Knees for His Enemy

Boston had always felt like ice creeping under my skin, but tonight, the atmosphere inside this forty-first-floor office was even more freezing. I stood behind the expansive mahogany desk—the same desk that had once belonged to my father before Cross Corporation swallowed his legacy whole. In front of me, the man who served as the face of my family’s ruin wasn't standing with the ruthless arrogance he usually displayed on the covers of Forbes. Nathaniel Cross was on his knees. He wasn't there because of physical force; he was there because he chose to be. The man Wall Street feared, a cold-blooded predator with silver-grey eyes as sharp as a scalpel, was now bowed at the feet of my four-inch stilettos. "Tell me," I whispered, my voice as chilling as the autumn wind whipping off the Charles River. "Who am I to you, Mr. Cross?" Nathaniel looked up. His silver hair was slightly disarrayed, a stark contrast to the lethal precision of his Savile Row suit. There was a hungry darkness in his eyes—a longing to be shattered that he never showed the world. It was a secret he kept buried behind the walls of his empire, a secret that had become my primary weapon to annihilate him. "You are my ruin," he replied, his voice raspy and thick with a terrifying kind of submission. I wanted to laugh. He didn't know how right he was. He had no idea that behind these emerald-green contacts lay the bright blue eyes of a girl named Ariana Devlin—the girl he’d left for dead five years ago. He didn't realize that every touch of mine was poison, and every command I gave was another step toward his execution. I leaned down, my silk-gloved fingers tracing his sharp jawline before gripping it with a strength that caught him off guard. "Good," I hissed into his ear. "Because I’m not finished destroying you yet." Tonight, Nathaniel Cross might feel like he had finally found someone who truly understood his darkness. But he was wrong. He wasn't falling in love. He was signing his own death warrant, inch by inch, under my absolute control. This wasn’t about love. This was about justice paid for in blood and tears. It was about the hunter finally kneeling at the feet of his prey. Welcome home, Ariana, a ghost whispered in the back of my mind. The game has only just begun.