BURNED TWICE

Chapter 2

THREE YEARS LATER

The TechVenture offices occupied the entire forty-second floor of the Sterling Building.

Well, that used to be the Sterling Building. Marcus had sold it six months ago. I'd bought it anonymously through three shell corporations. I liked working in the space where he'd built his empire. I liked the poetry of it.

The office was all glass and light and the kind of minimalist design that only wealthy people could afford. Open floor plans where everyone could see everyone else working. No secrets. No hidden offices where betrayals happened. Everything exposed.

I was standing at the window looking at the Manhattan skyline, my second coffee growing cold in my hand, when Amber knocked on my glass door.

"Ms. Mendez?" She was my assistant brilliant, efficient, and blissfully unconcerned with the drama of my personal life. "You have a meeting in ten minutes. The potential investor from Hong Kong."

"Cancel it," I said.

Amber didn't even flinch. "I already know you're going to say yes to the partnership, so I've prepared the preliminary documents. They're on your desk."

This was why Amber made six figures. I turned and smiled at her. "What would I do without you?"

"Probably wear mismatched shoes," she said, and gestured to my feet where I was indeed wearing one black pump and one navy pump. "Again."

I looked down. She was right. I'd done this three times this week. My therapist said it was a subconscious rebellion against control. I said it was because I had approximately eight thousand things on my mind, and shoes were simply not a priority.

"Good point," I conceded. "Set up the meeting. And order lunch. Actual lunch, not salad. I'm tired of pretending lettuce is food."

Amber grinned. "Done. Also, there's someone in the waiting area. No appointment. Says it's urgent and personal. He's been waiting for an hour."

My body went cold. "What does he look like?"

"Tall. Handsome. Dangerous. He's been standing completely still this entire time, just... waiting. It's creepy, honestly. Should I call security?"

I stood up. "What's his name?"

"He won't say. Just says you'll know who he is."

I did know. Or I thought I did. There was only one person who would show up unannounced and wait with the patience of a predator for me to have time for him.

"Don't call security," I said. "Actually, clear my schedule for the next hour."

I walked to the waiting area, my heart doing something weird in my chest a combination of anticipation and dread and something I didn't have a name for yet.

He was standing exactly where Amber had said, near the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the city like he owned it. And he probably did, in some way I didn't understand.

Dominic Ashford.

I'd seen him in person exactly twice since the night he'd appeared in my office three years ago. The first time was when he'd helped me set up the TechVenture infrastructure, moving silently around my apartment, arranging things that needed arranging, asking nothing in return. The second time was when I'd tried to find him to ask questions, and I'd failed. He'd let me fail.

Since then, he'd communicated exclusively through emails. Sparse. Efficient. Lacking any warmth or humanity.

And now he was here. In my office. Waiting for me like he had all the time in the world.

He turned when I entered. I'd forgotten how much presence he had. How the air changed when he looked at you. His ice-blue eyes tracked across my face like he was reading something written there in a language only he understood.

"Isabella," he said. My full name, the same way Marcus used to say it. But where Marcus used it as a weapon, Dominic used it like a prayer. "You look tired."

"You look like you weren't invited to my office," I replied.

"I wasn't." He wasn't smiling. Dominic had never smiled at me. I'd started to wonder if he was even capable of smiling. "But I need you to stop what you're doing."

"What I'm doing is building a billion-dollar company," I said. "I don't plan to stop that."

"I'm not talking about your company," he said. "I'm talking about Marcus."

Everything inside me went still.

"I don't know what you mean," I said, but it was a lie, and he knew it was a lie, and I knew he knew it.

Dominic walked toward me. Not quickly. Not aggressively. Just... inevitably. Like gravity. Like there was no point in resisting because the outcome was predetermined.

"You've been planning his destruction for three years," he said. "You thought you were being subtle. You weren't. You've been systematically eliminating his business partners, blocking his mergers, turning his investors against him. You orchestrated the collapse of Sterling Industries. You did that."

I said nothing. Which was basically admitting it.

"I know because I helped," he continued. "I moved the pieces. I made the introductions that led nowhere. I whispered in the ears of people who trust me. I ensured that every door he tried to open would close in his face. I did that for you."

"I didn't ask you to," I said.

"No," Dominic agreed. "You didn't. You did it yourself. But you're good at destruction, Isabella. You learned very quickly how to hurt people. The question I need answered is: when does it stop?"

"It stops when he hurts the way I hurt," I said, and the words came out like poison. Like I'd been holding them in my mouth for so long they'd started to burn.

"He already does," Dominic said. "He lost his company. He lost his wife. He lost his reputation. He's living in a studio apartment in Queens, Isabella, and he's working a job that pays thirty thousand a year. How much more destruction do you need?"

I turned away from him. I walked to the windows and looked at the city. "You don't understand. You're not human. You don't understand what it feels like to be betrayed by the two people you loved most."

"You're right," Dominic said. "I'm not human. And I've never loved anyone. But I understand revenge. I understand the way it feels like justice until one day you realize it just feels like poison."

"Is that what you felt?" I asked. "When you destroyed whoever wronged you?"

There was a long silence. When Dominic spoke again, his voice was different. Quieter. Like he was pulling the words from somewhere deep inside himself.

"I've destroyed many people," he said. "And I've never regretted it. But I don't have to live with them afterward. I can walk away. You can't. You both exist in this same world. This same city. And you're bound together now in ways you don't even understand yet."

"I don't want to be bound to him," I said.

"I know," Dominic replied. "But you are. And when you finally understand why, you're going to wish you'd stopped this a long time ago."

He moved past me toward the door. I thought he was leaving. But he stopped and turned back.

"Stop the revenge," he said. "Or I will stop it for you. And you won't like how I do things, Isabella. I promise you that."

Then he was gone, and I was alone in my glass office, looking at the city, trying to figure out which was worse being destroyed by people you loved, or destroying them in return.

The Hong Kong investor was forgotten. Amber made excuses. I sat in my office and stared at my computer, at the files I'd gathered on Marcus, at the plans I'd been making for his complete social annih

ilation, and I felt something shift inside me.

It didn't feel like victory.

It felt like drowning.