Billionaire's PlaythingJade Williams is not looking for trouble. She is looking for a paycheck. With a sick father and bills that do not stop coming, her job at Hartwell Corp is not a career — it is a lifeline. She keeps her head down, does her work better than anyone around her, and asks for nothing extra. That is the plan. It was a good plan until Cole Hartwell stepped out of an elevator and changed the temperature of the room.Cole is everything Jade does not need in her life right now. Self-made, ruthless, and used to getting exactly what he wants. He built an empire from scratch just to prove he did not need his father's name to do it. He is the kind of man who walks into a room and owns it without trying. The kind of man who has never heard the word no and had it stick.Then he finds Jade's file.Her work is exceptional. Her face stops him cold. He pulls her into a boardroom without warning, puts her on the spot in front of investors, and watches her hold the room like she has been doing it her whole life. He offers her money. She declines. He offers her a promotion. She declines. He takes her to the most expensive restaurant in the city and she walks out before the food arrives. Every time he reaches for her with power and money she takes a step back, and Cole Hartwell does not know what to do with that. She is the first person in a long time who behaves like he has nothing to offer, and it gets under his skin in a way he cannot shake.But Cole pushes too far. He has her followed. He shows up at her apartment uninvited with henchmen in tow. He uses her father's illness as leverage at the dinner table. He is so used to controlling outcomes that he does not notice how far over the line he has gone until Jade walks out of that restaurant and does not come back.And then she is kidnapped off the street.Cole watches it happen and cannot stop it. His men's tires are slashed. His own car is done. He stands on a dark street watching the cab disappear into traffic and feels something he has not felt in years — powerless.Jade wakes up in a mansion that whispers money from every corner. An old man walks in. Sleek grey hair, bathrobe, cigar. He is warm and unhurried and absolutely terrifying underneath it all. He tells her his name is not important. He tells her his men will return her without a scratch. He tells her to stay away from Cole Hartwell. When she protests that she is nothing to Cole, just an employee, he looks at her with sharp eyes and says he hopes that is true. Then he signals a masked man and she wakes up outside her own apartment like the whole night was a dream. The police already know not to look too hard. Nobody comes.That man is Scott Hartwell. Cole's father. And he is playing a game that started long before Jade walked into any of this.Jade goes back to the office one last time — not for Cole, but to close the deal she had started, because that is who she is. She hands in her resignation, sets the diamond earrings Cole gave her on his desk, and walks out. Cole watches her leave and sits alone with a feeling in his chest he has never had to name before. He has closed billion dollar deals. He has walked away from companies, cities, people. Nothing has felt like this.The problem is that Jade is now carrying something heavy and silent. She knows Scott got to her. She knows the war between father and son is real and dangerous and that she got caught in the middle of it. Every time she thinks about Cole she is thinking about a man walking around with no idea that his father has already made the first move. She wants to stay away. Scott told her to stay away. Every sensible part of her agrees.But she cannot stop thinking about him.Drew is still there through all of it. Warm, patient, quietly in love with her in a way he is too smart to say out loud. He is everything the situation is not — simple, safe, honest. Jade runs to him when she needs to breathe and he holds her without asking questions. She knows what Drew offers is real. She knows he would never put her in danger or use her father against her or send henchmen to her door. She knows all of that and still finds herself thinking about the wrong man.Cole, meanwhile, is changing. Slowly and without a roadmap. Jade's absence does something to him that her presence could not quite finish. He starts to look at how he pursued her and does not entirely like what he sees. The control, the pressure, the assumption that everything can be acquired — it worked for building an empire. It does not work for this. He starts to understand the difference between wanting someone and deserving them, and that gap is uncomfortable in a way he cannot buy his way out of.Then he finds out about his father.Not just that Scott is an enemy — he has always known that. But that Scott reached into his life and put his hands on Jade. That she woke up in his father's mansion and was warned off like a threat to be managed. And that she carried that
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