Love me Or Ruin me

Chapter Nine

“Prepare the private transport and secure a medical pavilion at our estate in Zurich. In exactly five days, I am leaving the country permanently.”

The words cut through the suffocating silence of the dark bedroom like a razor, cold, sharp, and entirely devoid of the trembling hesitation that had defined Larissa Miller for the last two years. I stood rigid by the window of our small downtown apartment, holding the encrypted black satellite phone tightly against my ear. Outside, the rain in Veridian City was hitting the glass pane in a frantic, chaotic rhythm, but my reflection in the dark glass was perfectly, chillingly still. The tear tracks on my cheeks had already dried into tight, stiff lines, burning away the last remnants of my naivety and leaving behind an unyielding layer of pure armor.

There was a sudden, breathless silence on the other end of the line. For a second, the only sound was the faint hum of satellite static. Then, a deep, instantly alert voice responded. It was Marcus, my primary global asset manager and the head of my security apparatus at Vale Industries.

“Zurich, ma'am?” Marcus asked, his standard, unshakeable professional composure cracking just enough to reveal his utter shock. “We’ve been waiting for this call for two years, but… may I ask what prompted the sudden departure? And a private medical pavilion?”

My left hand dropped instinctively to my flat stomach, a fierce, protective warmth blooming amidst the absolute ice freezing my veins. My fingertips pressed firmly against the soft fabric of my oversized sweater, guarding the tiny, vulnerable life Arian Voss would never get the chance to know, control, or ruin.

“I’m pregnant, Marcus,” I said, my voice dropping into a flat, freezing register of pure, lethal authority. “And my child will be raised entirely outside the reach of the Voss name and the toxic high-society circles of this city. But before I board that plane on Friday night, I have a few accounts to settle in Veridian. I built a king out of a savage, and now I’m going to strip him of his crown.”

A low, respectful chuckle came through the speaker, a sound of grim satisfaction. “Understood, Miss Vale. The shadow empire is fully at your disposal. The board directory has been frozen under your temporary alias, but we can reactivate your primary clearance within minutes. What are your first orders?”

“Start with the flagship downtown infrastructure project for the Voss Empire,” I commanded, my eyes locking onto the distant, glowing blue logo of Voss Tower piercing through the rainy city skyline. “The $180 million capital injection scheduled for this afternoon from our primary offshore shell company—pull it. Completely. Cancel the wire, scrub our financial signature from the digital logs, and leave their project accounts entirely empty.”

“Consider it done, ma'am. That will effectively freeze their construction site by midnight and trigger automatic municipal fines for contract breach. Voss won't know what hit him.”

“Good. I want him bleeding and desperate before the week is out. I’ll send you the parameters for Phase Two by midnight. Keep the jet ready.”

I ended the call, shutting the phone with a sharp, definitive click that echoed like a gunshot in the empty room. The ticking clock had officially begun. Five days. I had exactly five days to dismantle every single safety net I had spent two years covertly building for Arian Voss. Five days to turn his golden empire into a sinking ship, and five days to vanish into thin air before he could ever look at my face again.

Turning away from the window, I walked over to my modest wooden desk. I reached beneath the heavy frame, pulling the encrypted laptop from its hidden recess beneath the loose floorboards. The blue light of the screen flickered to life, reflecting in the cold, unblinking depths of my eyes as I bypassed three layers of biometric security. The corporate interface of Vale Industries materialized—showing a network of wealth that completely eclipsed the Voss Empire. With a few swift, merciless strokes of the keyboard, I authorized the immediate freeze on all joint ventures associated with Arian's name. The submissive secretary who loved him was dead, buried in the wreckage of his corner office. In her place sat a titan, and the war had officially begun.

Arian’s POV

I slammed my palms down onto the surface of my mahogany desk, the heavy wood groaning under the force of my sudden frustration.

It was already 4:00 PM, and Larissa’s desk outside my office was still completely empty. Her dual computer monitors were dark, her ergonomic chair was pushed back at an awkward angle, and her neat stack of digital organizers sat exactly where she had left them when she fled the room hours ago. I had spent the last several hours trying to focus on global market openings, but my eyes kept drifting to the sleek black smartphone resting on my leather blotter. Her phone. The one she had dropped on my floor.

A heavy, irritating restlessness was coiling tightly in my gut, making it entirely impossible to sit still. I didn't like the feeling. I didn't like how loud the silence outside my door felt without the steady, predictable sound of her typing, or the quiet grace with which she moved around my office. She was an employee—a highly efficient asset who happened to provide a certain level of comfort to my late nights, but an employee nonetheless. I hadn't broken any rules. I hadn't promised her a future beyond the high-walled, exclusive perimeter of my penthouse. She knew exactly who I was when she let me claim her. So why the hell did the look of raw, broken shock on her face keep flashing behind my eyelids every time I closed them?

The double doors of my office suddenly burst open without a knock, shattering my train of thought.

Skye Stone strode into the room, his expression unusually tense as he held a sleek aluminum tablet in his hand. Usually, my best friend entered my space with a lazy, arrogant smirk, ready to joke about whatever corporate rival we were crushing that week, but today his brow was heavily furrowed, his jaw set in a tight line.

“Arian, we have a catastrophic problem,” Skye said, dropping the tablet onto my desk right over my active files. “The main wire transfer for the downtown infrastructure project just bounced.”

I frowned, leaning forward, the annoyance dripping from my voice. “What do you mean it bounced? That funding is secured through an institutional credit line from an offshore fund. It’s been locked in for six months. The paperwork is flawless.”

“It’s not just delayed or caught in compliance, bro. It’s entirely gone,” Skye explained, pacing back and forth across the expanse of the room, his eyes darting to me with a strange, calculating intensity. “The entire $180 million was pulled back. The shell company holding the funds dissolved its contract with us forty minutes ago, citing an immediate, non-negotiable divestment clause. Our accounts for the downtown project are completely dry. If we don't present the city council with a certified proof of capital by midnight, they’re going to freeze construction, levy a ten-percent daily fine, and the financial media is going to catch wind of a major liquidity crisis.”

The blood in my veins turned to pure, liquid fire. I stood up swiftly, my six-foot-three frame casting a dark, predatory shadow over the desk. “Who owns that shell company, Skye? Find them. I don't care how many layers of offshore encryption they have, or what country they're hiding in. Nobody pulls a contract out from under the Voss Empire without my permission. Nobody.”

“My tech guys are trying, but it’s a ghost town, Arian. The trail leads directly into a digital brick wall owned by Vale Industries, and you know nobody gets access to the faceless Miss Vale,” Skye said, running a clumsy hand through his hair, though his gaze lingered heavily on the empty secretary desk visible through the open doorway. “By the way… where the hell is Larissa? The floor is an absolute mess without her, the filing is backing up, and my morning coffee tasted like literal battery acid. Did she take a sudden sick day?”

“She walked out,” I muttered coldly, my mind still spinning from the financial alert as I stared at the red lines on the tablet screen.

Skye’s eyes widened slightly, a flicker of something unreadable—perhaps surprise, perhaps suspicion—passing through his expression. “Walked out? Your perfect little shadow just left? The girl who hasn't missed a single hour of work in two years? Why?”

“Brittany showed up this morning,” I said, my voice dropping into a dark, irritated rumble as I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “She cornered me in here. Pulled an aggressive stunt right when Larissa opened the door to bring in the morning files. Larissa saw it and ran before I could even push Brittany off me.”

Skye let out a low whistle, though his posture quickly relaxed back into his usual casual demeanor. “Oof. Bad timing. But honestly, Arian? She’s a secretary. Girls like that get overly emotional when they see a high-society queen like Brittany Deus back in your orbit. She probably realized her place in the food chain and took off to save face. Don't sweat it. You have a $180 million hole in your flagship project to fix. Forget the girl; save the empire.”

I stared at the tablet, the flashing red lines on our capital accounts burning into my retinas. Skye was right. Business always came first. Larissa was a minor inconvenience, an administrative puzzle I could easily solve tomorrow with a massive severance check, a promotion, or a stern directive to return to her post. She was dependent on this job, after all.

But as I forced myself to log into our emergency reserve accounts to prepare a personal capital injection, the strange, tight knot in my chest only tightened. For the first time in five years, the absolute control I held over my world felt like it was beginning to slip through my fingers, and I didn't even know which fire to fight first.