MY VENGEFUL REBIRTH

CHAPTER 6— HOSTILE TAKEOVER

I wake up with Adrian’s teeth on my shoulder and his hand between my legs.

No gentle morning. No soft kisses. He wakes me up the same way he put me to sleep: owning me. Two fingers curl inside me, lazy but deep, and his voice is gravel against my ear.

“Board meeting’s at nine, Mrs. Graves.”

I’m not Mrs. Graves yet. Not legally. But I rolled the name around my mouth while he f****d me last night and it tasted like vengeance, so I’m keeping it.

“Let them wait,” I mumble, rocking down on his hand. I’m sore in the best way. Thighs bruised, throat marked, p***y still swollen from taking him four times after Damian left. “Unless you want to be late to your own coup.”

He bites my shoulder harder, just shy of breaking skin. “I want to be inside you when we bankrupt him. Can you handle that, princess?”

I turn in his arms and bite his lower lip until I taste copper. “Try me.”

8:47 a.m. Locke Holdings, 63rd Floor.

The boardroom is all glass and mahogany and old money. Damian’s father built it. Damian’s grandfather bled for it. Damian’s about to lose it.

I walk in first.

Red dress. Backless, slit to the hip, tight enough that there’s no question whose hands were on me last night. My hair is down, messy waves that still smell like Adrian’s shampoo. No jewelry except the bruises on my neck. Let them look. Let them see.

Adrian’s behind me, hand at the small of my back. Not possessive. Claiming. There’s a difference. He’s in a black suit cut to kill, no tie, top two buttons undone so the scar on his collarbone shows. He looks like a problem you can’t buy off.

Every head turns. Twelve board members. Three lawyers. Damian at the head of the table.

He’s in a Tom Ford again. Trying to look like he didn’t spend last night throwing up in his penthouse after watching his wife get f****d on another man’s couch. It’s not working. He’s pale. Shattered. And when he sees my dress, sees the way Adrian’s thumb strokes my spine, something in his face cracks.

“Vivienne,” he starts. “You can’t be—”

“Sit,” Adrian says. It’s not loud. It doesn’t need to be. The room obeys.

We don’t sit. We stand at the end of the table, side by side. United front. United f*****g weapon.

Adrian drops a folder on the glass. It’s thick. Labeled Project Frostbite. I picked the name.

“What’s this?” asks Richard Hale, oldest board member, Damian’s godfather. He’s looking at me like I’m a bug. He looked at me like that at my first wedding too.

“Your new majority shareholder,” Adrian says, and slides a pen to him. “Sign it, or I start liquidating. Your call.”

Chaos. Muted, rich-people chaos, but chaos. Papers rustle. Someone knocks over water. Damian stands so fast his chair hits the wall.

“You can’t do this,” he hisses at Adrian. “This is my company. My family—”

“Your family’s been embezzling for three years,” I cut in, and my voice carries. I picked this dress because red is the color of blood and I want him to see it. “Offshore accounts. Cayman Islands. You used my trust fund to cover the losses, Damian. You stole from your dead wife.”

His face goes white. “You were dead. You—”

“I was frozen,” I correct him, stepping around the table, hips swaying. “But I thawed. And I remember everything. The balcony. The lock. Celeste’s laugh.” I stop in front of him, close enough that he can see the bite mark peeking out of my dress. “You want to know what I remember most?”

He doesn’t answer. He can’t.

I lean in, lips at his ear, just like I did to Celeste. “I remember that I didn’t scream for you. I screamed for him.”

Adrian makes a sound behind me. Dark. Approving.

Damian flinches like I shot him.

“Sign,” Adrian says again, and this time it’s a command. “Or I release the videos. All of them. You locking her out. You drinking champagne while she died. You f*****g Celeste in her office. My IT guy’s very good, Locke. Very f*****g good.”

Richard Hale is already signing. Traitor. Smart traitor. The others follow. Dominoes.

Damian looks at me. Really looks. Not at my t**s or my legs or the diamond he couldn’t buy me back with. At me. The woman he killed and the woman who came back wrong.

“Vivienne,” he whispers. “Please.”

I touch his face. Gentle. He leans into it like the pathetic dog he is.

Then I dig my nails in. Hard enough to draw blood.

“You should have let me in,” I tell him. “Now you’re the one out in the cold.”

I turn my back on him. Walk back to Adrian. He opens his arm and I step into it, his hand sliding down to grip my ass right there in front of all of them. He doesn’t care who sees. He wants them to see.

“Meeting adjourned,” Adrian says. “Vivienne and I have a honeymoon to start.”

We leave them with the paperwork and the ruin.

The second the doors shut, Adrian has me against the wall. His mouth is on mine, hot and angry and victorious. His hand shoves my dress up, fingers finding me wet and ready. Always ready for him.

“You were perfect,” he growls into my mouth. “Christ, watching you destroy him… I’m so f*****g hard, princess.”

I’m already yanking his belt open. “Then do something about it.”

He spins me around, bends me over the railing, and tears my panties. No foreplay. No warning. Just the sound of his zipper and then he’s slamming into me from behind, one hand fisted in my hair, the other pinning my wrists.

“f**k!” I shout, and the elevator echoes. “Adrian!”

“You want them to hear?” he pants, f*****g me brutal, each thrust meant to bruise. “You want the whole building to know who owns you now?”

“Yes,” I sob, pushing back to meet him. “Let them hear. Let him hear.”

His phone is in his pocket. I know because I feel it vibrate. He pulls it out one-handed, hits a button, and puts it on speaker without stopping.

Damian’s voice, broken. “...you there?”

Adrian’s laugh is pure evil. He grabs my hips and drives in deeper, making me scream. “She’s a little busy right now, Locke. But she says hi.”

I’m gone. The orgasm rips through me violent, and I don’t care who hears. “Adrian! f**k, I’m coming, I’m—”

He follows me with a roar, coming inside me with his teeth in my shoulder, claiming me all over again.

The line is dead. Damian hung up. Or passed out. I don’t care.

The elevator dings. Ground floor.

Adrian pulls out of me slowly, fixes my dress, and hands me my torn panties. “Souvenir,” he says, smirking.

I tuck them into his suit pocket. “Next time, I’m not wearing any.”

He kisses me, slow and dirty, tasting like victory. “Next time is now. My car. My bed. My life.”

“Yours,” I agree.

And I mean it.