The cost of revenge

PROLOGUE

Five Years Ago

Ace Donato

The glass shattered against the marble floor.

Ace watched the amber liquid spread like blood across the white stone, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His hands were shaking. He couldn't make them stop. The crystal decanter lay in pieces at his feet, and still—still—he couldn't breathe.

His father's voice slithered through the speakerphone on the desk. Cold. Calculated. The voice of a man who had never lost a battle.

"Sign it, Alessandro. Or do you want to watch her mother get perp-walked on the evening news? I have the documents ready. Fabricated embezzlement. Falsified tax returns. She'll do ten years. Shayla will visit her in prison every Sunday, crying into the glass, wondering why her rich boyfriend didn't lift a finger."

Ace's jaw cracked from the pressure of his clench. His knuckles were white against the edge of the desk. The Montblanc pen lay in front of him like a weapon—platinum nib gleaming under the penthouse lights, mocking him.

"Shayla doesn't know about the threats, does she?" Dominic continued, the old man's voice like gravel scraping against bone. "She thinks you just woke up one morning and stopped loving her. Good. Let her hate you. Hatred keeps people alive. Love makes them stupid."

Ace's phone buzzed. A voicemail notification.

He'd been ignoring it for three hours.

His thumb hovered over the screen. He knew that number. He'd memorized it the first night she'd given it to him—scribbled on a napkin at a dive bar, her hands trembling, her smile bright enough to rival the sun.

"Ace... please..."

Her voice was shattered glass. Raw. Bleeding.

"I called your office. They said you're engaged. To some... some Valentina woman. Is that true? Just tell me it isn't true. Please. I need you to tell me—"

A sob. A wet, choking gasp that ripped through his chest like a bullet.

"I'm pregnant, Ace."

The pen fell from his fingers. It rolled across the Italian marble, leaving a tiny scratch of ink—a scar on the pristine surface, like the one forming on his soul.

"I found out this morning. I was so happy. I thought... I thought we were going to be a family." Her voice cracked into a whisper, fragile as spun glass. "Please, just call me back. Please don't leave me. I can't... I can't do this alone. I've never... I've never had anyone stay. Please."

Ace's hand shot out, slamming the phone face-down on the desk. The screen cracked. A spiderweb of black lines bloomed over her name, over the number he'd memorized, over the future he'd just destroyed.

He stood up so fast his chair crashed backward. The sound echoed off the floor-to-ceiling windows, ricocheting through the empty penthouse. He paced. He grabbed the decanter of whiskey—the one he hadn't thrown—and hurled it against the wall.

More glass. More amber liquid. More destruction.

He didn't feel the shards that sliced his palm. He didn't feel anything except the raw, screaming void where his heart used to be.

Sign it, or she goes to prison.

Don't sign it, and she keeps the baby—but you destroy her family.

The baby.

His child. Their child. A life that would never know him because he was too much of a coward to fight back.

Ace dropped to his knees. The glass bit into his flesh, but he didn't care. He pressed his forehead to the cold marble, his shoulders shaking, and he wept.

For the first time in his adult life—the first time since he'd learned that crying didn't fix anything, that tears were weakness, that weakness got you destroyed—Ace Donato fell apart.

He didn't call her back.

He never called her back.

---

In the morning, he married Valentina Russo.

A sterile civil ceremony. No flowers. No joy. Just a cold handshake with his new father-in-law and a wife who looked at him with the same hollow emptiness he felt. Valentina was beautiful, cold, and just as trapped as he was.

"You're not the only one who's been forced into this," she'd murmured as they signed the papers. "But at least we can be miserable together."

When the priest said, "You may kiss the bride," Ace closed his eyes, and for one agonizing second, he pretended the lips touching his belonged to a girl with honey-brown eyes and a laugh like sunlight.

He never made that mistake again.

For five years, he froze himself solid. He became the Ice Prince—the nickname the financial press had given him. He crushed rivals. He liquidated companies. He fired people with cold efficiency and watched them crumple. He never apologized. He never felt. He never let anyone close enough to shatter him again.

But at night—in the dark, when the penthouse was empty and the city glittered below like a betrayal—he would open his cracked phone, and he would listen to that voicemail.

"I can't do this alone. I've never had anyone stay."

He'd listen to her cry. He'd listen to her whisper the words he'd never hear in person.

"I lost it the day you left."

And then, he'd pour a whiskey. He'd stare at the Miami skyline. And he'd wonder if hell had a colder corner than the one he'd built for himself.

---

Shayla Simmons

Five years ago, I believed in love.

I believed in it with every fiber of my being. I believed that if you loved someone enough, they would stay. They would fight for you. They would choose you, again and again, no matter what.

I was wrong.

I stood in the bathroom of my tiny apartment, staring at the positive pregnancy test in my trembling hands. My heart was soaring. My hands were shaking. I was going to have a baby. Ace's baby. Our baby.

I called him. I left a voicemail. I told him everything.

And he never called back.

I waited for hours. Days. Weeks. I called his office, his home, his friends. No one would tell me where he was. No one would tell me what had happened.

And then I saw it.

The engagement announcement. Ace Donato and Valentina Russo. A merger of two of the wealthiest families in Miami.

He'd moved on. He'd chosen someone else. He'd left me without a word.

I felt something inside me shatter. The hope I'd been holding onto, the belief that he would come back, the certainty that he loved me—it all crumbled into dust.

I lost the baby three days later.

I was alone in the hospital, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the cold sheets scratching against my skin. There was no one to hold my hand. No one to tell me it would be okay. No one to stay.

I made a promise to myself that day. I would never let anyone break me again. I would never trust anyone with my heart. I would never be that vulnerable, that hopeful, that foolish.

I built walls around my heart. Brick by brick, I sealed myself off from the world. I threw myself into my work, into my career, into building a life that didn't depend on anyone else.

And when Julian came along—kind, steady, safe Julian—I convinced myself that I could love him. That it was enough. That I didn't need passion or fire or the kind of love that consumed you whole.

I was wrong.

I didn't know it then. I didn't know that five years later, I would be standing in a hotel ballroom, watching the man who broke my heart outbid me for the project of a lifetime.

I didn't know that I would look into his eyes and feel everything I'd tried so hard to bury.

I didn't know that he would tell me he'd never forgotten a single second.

And I didn't know that I was about to be pulled back into a world I'd spent five years trying to escape.

---

Ace Donato

I watched her walk out of the ballroom.

She was wearing red—crimson silk that clung to her curves, a dress that screamed power and confidence. She was nothing like the shy, soft girl I'd left five years ago. She was harder. Sharper. Stronger.

And she was still the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

I stood in the middle of the ballroom, the Golden Hammer heavy in my grip. People were congratulating me on my "win," but I didn't feel like a winner. I felt like I'd just lost the only thing that had ever mattered.

I didn't follow her. Not immediately. I needed a moment to breathe, to process, to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do now.

She was engaged. She was engaged to someone else. A doctor. A good man. The kind of man who would never hurt her, never leave her, never break her heart.

The exact opposite of me.

I pulled out my phone. The screen was still cracked—the same one I'd shattered five years ago when I'd slammed it on my desk after listening to her voicemail.

I pressed play.

"I can't do this alone. I've never had anyone stay."

Her voice. The same raw, broken voice that had haunted me for five years.

"I lost it the day you left."

I closed my eyes, the tears burning behind my lids.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."

I opened my eyes. I looked at the door she'd just walked through.

And I made a decision.

I was going to win her back. Not by force, not by manipulation, not by the ruthless tactics I'd used in business. I was going to earn her trust. I was going to prove that I'd changed. I was going to show her that the man who left her was a coward, but the man who came back was willing to fight for her.

Even if it took the rest of my life.

I started walking.

"I don't care if you're engaged," I muttered under my breath, my voice rough with obsession and regret. "I don't care if my father rises from his hospital bed to stop me. I don't care if I have to burn down every bridge I've ever built."

I pushed open the doors and walked into the Miami night.

"I am going to earn your forgiveness, Shayla. Even if it kills me."

The city was dark, the streets empty. I didn't know where she'd gone. I didn't know if she'd ever forgive me. I didn't know if I deserved to be forgiven.

But I knew one thing.

I wasn't going to stop until I found out.