Runaway Ghost: Claimed by the CEO

I spent three years as a well-kept secret to the city's most ruthless billionaire. Then, on the day of his glittering, high-society engagement, I faked my death and vanished off the maptaking his unborn child with me.

Five years later, my carefully constructed ghost life crashed and burned when I bumped straight into him, my little boy clutching my hand.

Alaric's massive frame backed me into a corner, his raw, rough thumb swiping hard across my lower lip. His dark gaze was pure, unadulterated predation, stripping away every lie I'd rehearsed.

"Where is the father?" he demanded.

"Dead."

A dark, twisted smirk curved his mouth. "Perfect. He saved me the trouble of doing it myself. That means the kid is mine."

He slammed one heavy hand against the wall right beside my ear, sealing off my escape. His scorching breath, heavy with that dangerously familiar cedarwood scent, washed over my skin. "You can't run from me. Not anymore. You and this childyou both belong to me."

Wait what?

Chapter 1

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, my pulse hammering against my ribs as I stared at Alaric.

Alaric slammed both hands onto the back of my chair, trapping me in his heavy shadow.

"Dead for five years. A kid who's four and a half." His voice was a low, dangerous rumble. "Fallon. Look me in the eye and tell me whose kid that is."

"I cheated on you. Back then."

A dark, humorless laugh slipped past his lips. "And who exactly did you cheat on me with?"

"He's dead."

"Perfect. Saves me the trouble." He downed his black coffee in two harsh swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"Weren't you dead, too? A fiery car crash off a cliff. No remains found. They even printed a damn death certificate."

He ripped a silver chain from his neck and slammed it onto the table. The metal clattered against the cheap formica. He leaned in close to my ear, his voice a dangerous, gravelly snarl. "Playing me for a fool for five entire years was it a game to you, Fallon?"

My gaze snapped to the chain. Strung on it was the diamond engagement ring hed given me five years ago. My chest tightened.

"You're coming back with me," he stated.

"I"

He pushed up from the booth. At six-foot-three, his massive frame swallowed all the dingy fluorescent light above me, casting me entirely in his shadow. A hard muscle feathered along his sharp jawline.

"Or do you really want to do this the hard way?"

Bastard.

I knew a losing battle when I saw one.

The black stretch limo rolled through the wrought-iron gates of the estate, and reality finally crashed over me. Even after five years, my body knew every turn of the road leading to Alarics house.

"Mommy"

Jude had slept the entire ride. He rubbed his eyes, his little cheeks flushed from sleep, and the tight knot in my chest instantly unraveled.

I brushed a curl from his forehead. "We're almost there, baby. We're just going to visit this nice man's house for a few days, and then we'll go right back home, okay?"

Alaric's voice dropped to a freezing register. "Where exactly do you think you're going?"

"Home."

He leaned in, trapping my gaze. "Your home is right here."

I jerked my head away, clamping my mouth shut.

Jude pressed his face against the tinted glass, oblivious to the heavy tension. "Mommy, it's so pretty out there!"

This was a private estate in the Palisades, where the dirt alone cost millions. Of course it was pretty. The meticulously manicured gardens were exploding in full summer bloom.

"If you like it, you and your mommy can live here forever," Alaric said smoothly.

Jude lifted his chin. "I like it, but I listen to my mommy. I go wherever she goes."

A fierce wave of pride washed over me. I shot Alaric a triumphant glare.

He just turned his head to look out the window, but I caught the unmistakable, predatory curve of a smile playing on his lips.

We stepped through the massive front doors, and my breath caught in my throat. It was exactly the same.

The warm beige sofa covers I picked out. The pastel floor lamp I insisted on buying. Even the matching couple's mugs I bought five years ago were still on the coffee tablethough only his was sitting out.

There was only one difference. An entire wall of the living room was now buried under brand-new, obscenely expensive toys.

Jude let out a massive gasp. "Whoa!"

Alaric chuckled, dropping to one knee. "Come on. Let's go rip them open."

I ground my teeth together. That manipulative bastard. Throwing money around was his signature move.

I shoved my feet into the pink fuzzy slippers Alaric had waiting for me and shuffled over to the toy wall, crossing my arms.

"You're awfully eager to buy toys for another man's son," I sniped.

Alaric didn't even look up from building a race track. "Mhm."

He reached into his tailored suit jacket and pulled out a sleek velvet box, flipping it open with one thumb. "I'm also awfully eager to buy diamonds for another man's wife."

Chapter 2

I glanced down at the velvet box.

Damn it.

It was a piece of custom high jewelry worth a downtown penthouse!

Before I could even process it, Alaric was already holding Jude's hand, leading him down the hall. "Come on, let me show you your room."

My fingers dug into the velvet box as I trailed after them. I stopped dead in my tracks, staring at the meticulously designed kid's room in front of me.

"You're willing to go all out on a room for another man's son?"

Alarics massive frame blocked the doorway. His dark gaze swept over my body with zero hesitation, his voice dropping to a gravelly, dangerous pitch. "Not just that. I'm also going to sleep in the same bed as another man's wife."

God, this was exactly the face that had ruined me five years ago. My heart slammed against my ribs. Panicking at the implication of his words, I quickly threw up a defense.

"Jude has slept with me since he was a baby. He can't fall asleep without me. So, I'll be sleeping in here with him."

Jude instinctively blinked in confusion. "Mommy, I'm a big boy! Since when do I"

I shot him a lethal glare.

Jude visibly shivered and made a hard left turn. "Since since always! I always sleep with Mommy."

Smart kid.

Alaric gave us the master suite. He took Jude's kid room.

"You have a massive mansion full of empty guest rooms, and you choose to sleep in a kid's room? Real mature."

"Yeah, I'm immature," he countered, casually tossing a perfectly peeled shrimp onto my plate. "Sleeping in Jude's room means the second I open my eyes, I remember I have a son. I like that feeling."

I opened my mouth to snap back, but Jude's tiny voice cut me off. "Mommy is he really my daddy?"

The words died in my throat.

I had spent his entire life feeding him the same liethat his father was just too busy working, but loved us very much. Alaric was his biological father. If Jude grew up and decided he wanted that connection, I had no right to steal that from him just because I was bitter.

Alaric stared at me, a raw, burning anticipation flickering in his dark eyes. But as my silence stretched out, the light in his gaze fractured and died.

Why was he acting like the victim? He was the one who practically pushed me out the door back then, making it painfully clear we had no future. I had just saved him the trouble of pulling the trigger.

The next day, Alaric was gone. I slipped on my shoes, planning to scout the perimeter and calculate my chances of making a run for it.

Instead, Nancy intercepted me at the front door with a beaming smile.

"Miss Fallon, you're really back! I thought the boss was pulling my leg." She wiped her hands on her apron. "And look how big the little guy is! He's a spitting image of Mr. Alaric when he was a boy."

I forced a tight smile.

At noon, Nancy prepared lunch. Jude shoved a massive bite into his mouth and offered his highest compliment. "Nancy, this is so good! It tastes just like the cafeteria at my preschool!"

My mouth twitched. Nancy was a Michelin-level private chef who charged thousands an hour. I prayed she didn't hear that.

Back in the day, when my stomach issues were at their worst, Nancy's cooking was the only thing I could keep down. Alaric had poached her with an astronomical salary just to feed me. Now that I was back in his trap, she was apparently back on the payroll.

Alaric didn't return until deep into the night. Ever since having Jude, I was an insanely light sleeper. The second the bedroom door handle clicked, my eyes flew open in the dark.

Damn it. I forgot to lock the door.

I held my breath, feigning sleep. I felt the shift in the air as his towering presence hovered over Jude's side of the bed for a long moment before moving silently to my side.

Minutes dragged by. He wasn't leaving.

Suddenly, the mattress dipped. The rich scent of cedarwood, laced with expensive bourbon, washed over my face.

His large, rough hand cupped the back of my head. His burning mouth crashed over mine, his tongue forcing my teeth apart to swallow my gasp.

Chapter 3

Rage spiked through my veins. I snapped my eyes open and swung my free hand at his facebut Alaric caught my wrist mid-air. His rough, dry palm swallowed my hand, interlacing his fingers tightly with mine.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the dangerous, predatory smirk on his face. He pressed his lips against the corner of my mouth, a low, rumbling chuckle vibrating against my skin. "Done playing sleeping beauty? Keep your voice down. You'll wake Jude."

He trailed a series of burning kisses down my jawline.

I shoved hard against his rock-solid chest, but he easily pinned both my wrists above my head, sinking my weight deep into the mattress. "Are you insane?!" I hissed. "Get off me!"

Alaric used to be practically untouchablean elite billionaire who never let a single hair fall out of place. He had never been this messy, this raw. He loosened his iron grip on my wrists, dragging my palm down to press against his jaw, rough with a five-o'clock shadow.

"So" his voice was a gravelly whisper against my skin. "When exactly are you going to tell Jude I'm his dad?"

"You're not."

"Still lying through your teeth," he murmured. "You can stall all you want, Fallon. You can't hide it forever."

I ripped my hand away, my chest heaving. "Does your wife know you do this kind of thing in the middle of the night?"

"I'm not married." His dark eyes locked onto mine. "You really did cut me off, didn't you? Didn't even bother looking me up once."

I froze. The day I faked my death and vanished was the exact day of his fiance's grandfather's massive birthday banquet.

"Your fiance, then"

"I don't have a fiance."

"Bullshit, you"

"I only have you." Alaric's gaze burned into me, the intense, suffocating weight in his eyes making it impossible to tell if it was the bourbon talking or the truth.

The mattress shifted.

But Alaric hadn't moved a muscle.

I followed his gaze, slowly turning my head.

A tiny silhouette was dragging his little blanket across the bed, inching his way toward the edge. The air in the room went dead silent. Jude realized he was busted. He stopped, turned his head, and let out a heavy, dramatic sigh when he saw both of us staring at him.

"Mommy, I'm just going to sleep in my own room," he whispered. "I don't want to be part of your weird adult wrestling match."

The words died on my tongue.

Alaric burst into a deep, booming laugh, his chest vibrating against mine.

We had been trapped in this house for a week. The once-empty, suffocatingly quiet mansion was suddenly bustling. Nancy was back in the kitchen. The familiar security detail was back at the gates, along with a newly hired team of maids.

And they all did the exact same thing every single day: gossip. Specifically, about Alaric.

If I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water, the maids would suddenly start talking exceptionally loud.

"Did you hear Mr. Alaric never got married? Never even engaged. He's kept himself completely off the market these past few years, just focusing entirely on the corporation."

"Oh, absolutely. The ultimate billionaire bachelor."

If I stepped out to the garden, the stone-faced security guards would practically yell across the lawn.

"Hey, you hear about that A-list actress who tried to leak a fake PR rumor linking herself to the boss?"

"Yeah, what did he do?"

"He had our legal team drop three massive public statements shutting it down in an hour. Total lockdown. Practically screaming, 'Don't even breathe in my direction!'"

"A true gentleman. Keeping himself perfectly loyal even when his family isn't around. What a guy."

I stared at the ceiling, utterly exhausted by the theatrical performance.

Alaric was a billionaire running an empire. He was busy. But the second he was off the clock, he was right here, invading our space. If I gave him the cold shoulder, hed just turn his attention entirely to Jude.

He sat on the floor building massive Lego sets. He bought a million-dollar custom telescope just because Jude pointed at the sky, casually dropping facts about different galaxies and constellations like he had a PhD in astrophysics.

It was everything I couldn't give my son.

I didn't even know what Legos were until I started dating Alaric. I had no idea a box of plastic bricks could cost a month's rent. I definitely didn't know anything about astronomy. Those were rich people hobbies. Luxury interests.

I grew up in a world where the only lesson hammered into my head was that survival came first and dreams were a waste of time. I thought I had given Jude the absolute best life I could.

But my best was a tiny, limited box.

I knew exactly how impossible it was to shatter the ceiling between social classes. And I knew exactly how much it hurt to realize you were never meant to be anything more than ordinary.

Chapter 4

I wasn't exactly broke, but I didn't have this kind of money. Should I really force Jude to stay with me and abandon this unimaginable, sickening level of wealth? Not just the money, but the absolute access to the world.

Alaric's gaze was constantly tracking me. Seeing me zone out, he nudged Jude, who was glued to the telescope. "Mommy's in a bad mood, and she doesn't want to talk to me. Can you go cheer her up for me?"

Before I could react, Jude sprinted over, tugging my hand until I leaned down. He planted a loud, wet kiss on my cheek. Then, he cupped his hand over my ear and whispered, "That was from Daddy."

My fingers froze around his small hand.

Alaric definitely hadn't heard him. He just stood a few feet away, watching the two of us. Staring at us like we were his entire goddamn universe.

The heavy thoughts kept me tossing and turning. I dragged myself out of bed in the middle of the night.

I was a fiction author, and my backlog of scheduled chapters was dried up. If I didn't hit my word count, my editor would hunt me down. I shoved my wire-rimmed glasses onto my face and sat at the kitchen island, furiously typing on my laptop.

Alaric walked out of the shadows. He was holding a sleek tablet covered in dense financial spreadsheets, a pair of silver-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

"Still awake?"

I ignored his attempt at conversation, my fingers hammering the keys. "I'm busy."

"Busy with what?"

"Nothing."

Alaric took a slow sip of water. He just wouldn't drop it. "If you're not working, how are you raising a kid? You didn't take a single one of my credit cards when you left."

"I took your mother's blank check."

"And you never cashed it."

It wasn't that I wouldn't use it. I just didn't need that kind of insane money yet. If a real emergency ever hit, I would have cashed it in a heartbeat.

He didn't step closer to peek at my screen. He just asked again, "What are you working on?"

I gave him the silent treatment.

Alaric let out a low chuckle. "Right. Playing hard to get."

He unlocked his phone and put on a deep, dramatic narrator voice, reading out every single word with perfect diction. "The Billionaire's Defiant Runaway Wife. His 99th Attempt to Catch His Runaway Bride. Reborn as the Alpha's Target"

My fingers slammed to a dead halt over the keyboard. A scalding heat rushed to my cheeks. Holy shit. Those were my trashy, embarrassing romance novels!

"Alaric!!"

Completely humiliated, I lunged at him, trying to snatch the phone out of his hand. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he laughed.

I didn't get the phone. Instead, I crashed hard against his broad, rock-solid chest. Alaric immediately gripped my waist, hauling me up and pinning me down hard across his lap. The raw physical dominance of his grip paralyzed me. An intoxicating wave of raw male pheromones and rich cedarwood instantly hijacked every single one of my senses.

He locked his arms around me, his scorching breath brushing against the sensitive skin behind my ear.

I glared up at him, my chest heaving. "Let me go!"

He raised a dark eyebrow. "Stop acting so cute when you're mad."

My blood boiled. "Are you going to let me go or not?!"

"Give me a kiss, and I will."

"Get off me! Get your hands off!"

A deep, rumbling laugh shook his entire chest. "You're driving me crazy," he murmured. "I'm not letting you go."

My throat tightened with sheer frustration. "Why are you acting like this?!"

He used to humor me back in the day, but he was always so guarded, so rigidly in control. He had never been this utterly shameless.

"They're well written. Why are you so embarrassed?" Alaric's low, gravelly voice echoed in the quiet kitchen.

"But this one is the best. The Years Tied to You."

Hearing that specific titlethe only normal one I had ever writtenmy spine turned to steel in his arms. I stopped struggling.

Alaric lowered his voice, his tone incredibly soft. "Are we the inspiration for that one? Tell me the truth, Fallon, and I'll give you every single answer you've ever wanted."

The massive patio doors were left open. The heavy summer night breeze swept in, carrying the scent of the blooming gardens. The scent yanked at my memories, dragging me backward through time, right back to the very beginning.

Chapter 5

I met Alaric eight years ago.

I grew up in a freezing, dead-end crabbing town on the coast of Maine. In a house where being born a girl was practically a financial death sentence.

Actually, my given name wasn't Fallon. When I was born, my parents were so furious I wasn't a boy that they gave me a name that literally meant "sorrow."

And my brother, born exactly a year later? Hunter. The golden boy. The pride of the bloodline.

I used to overhear the old women gossiping at the docks about how deeply disappointed my parents were by my existence. I didn't get it then. They were my flesh and bloodwhy did they look at me like I was a parasite?

Later, I figured it out. Ignorance is a terminal disease.

In our town, girls weren't treated like kids. We were tools. We were born with price tags, branded from day one as live-in maids until we could be married off to the nearest guy with a steady paycheck.

Hunter, though? He got a brand-new wardrobe every season. My parents slaved away at the local cannery, barely scraping together minimum wage, but they wouldn't blink at dropping three hundred bucks on a pair of designer sneakers for their precious son.

Meanwhile, I was shoving my feet into worn-out canvas shoes in the dead of winter, my toes split and bleeding from severe frostbite.

Hunter would sit at the kitchen table, grease dripping down his chin as he devoured massive buckets of takeout fried chicken. I got watered-down canned soup. Once, when the hunger clawed so deep I couldn't stand it, I tried to sneak a single piece of crispy skin. My mother slapped the back of my head and viciously called me a greedy little bitch.

They constantly reminded me that girls were just a bad return on investment. If I ate too much, I'd get fat, and then no man would want to take the "financial burden" off their hands.

At my run-down public school, ambition in girls was a joke. Most of the girls in my class just accepted the grim reality. Why bother studying when the finish line was just getting pregnant by a high school dropout and settling into a trailer two towns over? They thought this miserable patch of dirt was all there was.

But I refused to let that be my ending.

Since I was a kid, I had exactly one objective permanently burned into my brain: Climb out. Escape. The world was too massive for my only destiny to be a broodmare trapped in a cage.

Years later, I read a quote somewhere: What's the first step to becoming a writer? Have a profoundly screwed-up childhood.

In middle school, I devoured every battered paperback I could get my hands on. It sparked a fierce itch in my fingers. I started bleeding my reality, my trauma, and my desperate ambition onto the pages of a cheap spiral notebook.

I decided I was going to be an author.

Then, my homeroom teacher found it. Margaret confiscated the notebook and called me into her office.

My stomach tied itself into agonizing knots. That notebook was filled with every dark secret I couldn't voice out loud, and wild, impossible dreams that felt humiliating to expose. My palms were sweating right up until she offered me a soft, genuine smile.

She slid the battered notebook back across her desk. "You were in Physics. You really shouldn't be distracted during a lecture."

She paused, the corners of her eyes crinkling warmly. "But I only read one page. It's incredibly well-written.

"You have a real gift. Just promise me you'll save the writing for Study Hall from now on, okay?"

My breath hitched. I snapped my head up to meet her gaze. Margaret was the exact same age as my mother, but her eyes held none of the toxic disgust I was used to. When she looked at me, there was only warmth.

A burning lump formed in my throat. I nodded, gripping the notebook tightly to my chest.

For the longest time, I foolishly believed that if I just bled enough, if I just clawed hard enough, I could eventually dig my way out of hell.

Then, one day, I overheard my parents talking to our neighbor, Nancy.

"She finished middle school. You've done your duty as parents," Nancy sneered. "Girls only need enough schooling to teach their sons how to read. A daughter isn't real family anyway.

"The smart move is to pull her out, put her on the factory line, and have her start bringing in cash to support Hunter. Why are you still pouring money down the drain? No one raises a girl like that. Fallon's pretty.

"A lot of guys are already looking. Marry her off to someone with a fat wallet, and you can use that massive payout to set Hunter up for life. Shell settle down, pop out a kid, and serve her man.

"Thats just how life works. Then Hunters future wife will give you a big, healthy grandson, and you can just sit back and enjoy your retirement."

Raucous laughter echoed through the thin walls. It was the first time I had ever heard my mother laugh with such pure, unadulterated joy. She was completely intoxicated by the miserable future Nancy had just painted.

I stood paralyzed behind the grime-crusted window, my fingernails digging so hard into the peeling windowsill that the wood splintered beneath my skin.

Even with my perfect grades, it didn't matter. They were never going to let me go to high school.

I knew exactly what happened to the girls who dropped out here. They were married off to deadbeats and got knocked up before they could even legally drink. The thought of those purple stretch marks completely burying my future was a nightmare that violently woke me up in cold sweats. If they were lucky, they got a guy who worked a blue-collar job.

If they weren't, they got a dead weight who crashed on the filthy mattress the second he got home, expecting to be served like a king. These girls weren't even twenty, balancing a screaming infant on their hips while scrubbing mountains of greasy dishes. And the guy? He'd be chugging cheap beer, screaming at his video games, and kicking his wife out of the way like a stray dog if she didn't move fast enough.

Worse, if her first kid was a girl, she'd be pregnant again before she even healed, desperate to give him a son. And that daughter? She'd just grow up to repeat the exact same suffocating, miserable cycle.

I heard my execution sentence loud and clear.

But I had no leverage. I just swallowed the panic, clamped my mouth shut, and studied like an absolute maniac. I scrubbed the floors in dead silence. I starved myself, hoarding every single penny of my microscopic food allowance, desperately trying to scrape together enough cash for high school tuition.

God, no one knew how intensely I envied Hunter. And no one knew how deeply my hatred for him rotted my stomach. He had a golden ticket handed to him on a silver platter, and he just threw it in the trash, rotting on the couch all day, swiping on the only smartphone in the house.

I crushed my middle school finals and scored the absolute highest grade in the entire district. I earned a spot at the prestigious magnet high school in the city.

For the first time in fifteen years, my hands trembled as I gripped that piece of paper and dared to make a demand. I stood in front of my silent parents, wearing a hand-me-down t-shirt that hung awkwardly off my shoulders.

"Dad. Mom. I want to go to high school."

They sat on their rickety folding chairs, staring at the dirt floor in dead silence.

My dad snapped first. He slammed his cheap cigarette onto the ground, crushing it under his heavy boot.

"You've read so many damn books you've lost your mind! You think you can just go to school because you want to? Where the hell are we supposed to get the money for that?"

I knew this was exactly how the negotiation would end, but a wave of suffocating injustice still violently crushed my chest.

Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but I screamed back. "What do you mean, no money?! Hunter gets money for junk food!

"Hunter gets money to hang out! Hunter gets money for every single thing he breathes on! Why can't I have a single dime for my education?!"

Hunter, pushing two hundred pounds of sheer laziness, had been cursing at his video game on the couch. Hearing me scream, he suddenly slammed the thick textbook he was using as a makeshift mousepad onto the floor.

"You stupid bitch, what the hell is that supposed to mean?!" he shot back, his face flushed red. "You're just pissed off that I'm actually living a good life, aren't you?!"

I stared at the heavy textbook he had casually shoved under his hand just to get a better angle for his game.

A book that was nothing but garbage to him.

A book that could have been the foundation of my entire life.

Chapter 7

My dad was heaving, his chest rising and falling violently. "You ungrateful little bitch! You're nothing but a financial drain! You think you can compare yourself to Hunter? You don't even have a fraction of his worth!"

He snatched the acceptance letter right out of my hand. With one violent jerk, he ripped it in half.

"If it wasn't for Hunter, our family name would die out! Do you get that?!"

I lunged forward to grab the torn pieces. His heavy hand struck my shoulder, sending me crashing hard against the dirt floor.

My mother didn't say a single word. She just turned her back to me and walked to the stove. She had bought expensive cuts of ribeye steak earlier that morningjust because Hunter had casually mentioned he was craving it.

Hunter hadn't moved a single muscle from his spot on the couch, but he had already won. He leaned over and spat on the floor right next to my hand. No one stopped him.

The last ember of hope inside my chest was smothered out, leaving nothing but ash.

The scrapes on my knees from hitting the floor were left unbandaged. Deep into the night, they burned and throbbed. I curled into a tight ball on my sagging mattress. My teeth sank so deeply into my own wrist that I tasted copper, desperately trying to swallow down the violent sobs tearing up my throat.

The dark was absolute. Out here in the backwoods, the night swallowed everything whole.

Not a single sliver of light bled through the window.

A few days later, rumors exploded through the middle school that the district valedictorian was dropping out.

Everyone who heard it just shook their heads and let out a collective, patronizing sigh.

"Well, she's a girl."

"What do you expect? Girls just don't have the drive."

If girls were beaten into silence, no one ever saw the hands choking the life out of their futures. They just casually brushed it off, blindly concluding that we simply lacked ambition.

Before the week was over, Margaret tracked me down.

She pulled me into her office and pushed me into a chair. She studied my face for a long moment before letting out a soft breath.

"Fallon. I told you beforeyou have a real gift. You write incredible stories." She paused.

"But writing requires living. It requires experience. On that page I read, you said you wanted to be an author. How can you become a writer if you stop learning now?"

The dam holding back all my suffocating injustice shattered. My throat seized. I was gasping for air, unable to force a single word past the tight knot in my windpipe.

Sometimes, the most agonizing cuts don't come from the brutal reality of the present. They come from the crushing realization that, for a split second, you actually believed you could become the exact person you dreamed of being.

"It's not that I don't want to go," I choked out, my voice raw. "I can't. My dad tore up the acceptance letter. He won't let me go."

My control totally snapped. My trembling fingers dug desperately into the soft fabric of Margaret's sleeve. "Why can't I go? Just because I'm a girl? Are girls not allowed to learn? Are we really only allowed to have one miserable path in life?"

Margaret's eyes glistened. She leaned down and wrapped her arms tightly around me, pulling me into a warm, deeply grounding hug.

I thought that hug was the end of it.

My mind was already racing, frantically calculating how I was going to survive the factory lines. If I was forced to marry and breed, how was I supposed to claw my way out of that hell? Could I even survive it?

I never expected Margaret to show up at my front door.

She placed a thick, white envelope directly onto the wobbly kitchen table in front of my parents. "There is ten thousand dollars in here."

My brain stalled. My parents just stared, stunned.

That was more than half a year's combined wages for them. Between Hunter's constant junk food and gaming habits, they couldn't save that kind of cash in a decade.

After what felt like hours, my mother finally found her voice. "Mrs. Margaret what is this?"

Margaret smiled warmly, her hand firmly holding mine. "Fallon placed first in the entire district. She brought immense pride to our school.

"This is a special academic grant from the city magnet school, strictly reserved for the top student. The admissions office also stated that if Fallon attends, all her tuition and board will be completely covered."

I had never heard of any academic grant like that.

And I wasn't a naive little kid anymore. It only took me a fraction of a second to connect the dots.

The magnet school didn't send that money. Margaret did.

Chapter 8

My dad looked at the stack of bills, then back at Margaret. "You can make money just by going to school?"

Margaret shook her head. "Not everyone. Only the exceptionally gifted ones."

"Once Fallon gets to college, there are scholarships and massive academic grants. Low-income families can apply for federal student loans that she can pay off herself after she graduates. None of this will cost you a single dime. Fallon is brilliant.

"Kids like her go on to make serious money after getting their degrees. I heard you're already trying to set her up with local guys. How much of a payout are you really going to get for her in this dead-end town? Compare that to what she could earn as a college grad.

"Can't you do the math?"

Margaret's voice was soft, but she stood like an absolute fortress in front of me. I stared at the frayed, worn-out stitching on the shoulder of her cheap cardigan, hot tears spilling silently down my cheeks.

"What are you crying for? No crying," she whispered, her thumb brushing a tear from my jaw. "You just focus on your studies and keep marching forward.

"My family and I talked it over. Were going to cover your living expenses through high school and college. Just treat it as a loan. You have to pay us back in the future, understand?"

I wanted this so desperately my bones ached. I gripped that debit card so hard my knuckles turned dead white, nodding frantically as tears blurred my vision. "I understand."

Margaret offered a gentle, warm smile, her hand softly stroking my hair.

Ahead of me, the distant streetlights flickered like a lifeline. Behind me, the endless, suffocating darkness of that house. Standing right on the jagged edge between light and shadow, my chest violently heaved, and I completely broke down. I swore to myself right then and there: I would never, ever let her down.

High school was brutal. But the saving grace was that I boarded in the dorms. I didn't have to scrub floors, I didn't have to break my back doing manual labor, and I didn't have to look at those three toxic faces ever again.

I poured every single ounce of my energy into surviving. During the semester, I studied like my life depended on it. On breaks, I worked every grueling minimum-wage shift I could find.

Margaret consistently transferred money into that account. Whenever she noticed I wasn't spending much, shed call to lecture me, telling me to stop starving myself and buy what I actually needed.

I knew Margaret had a son in college, and her husband was just a public school teacher too. Two educators in a rural district made absolute dirt for a living. The fact that she bought my ticket to high school was a massive debt I could barely carry; I would rather die than waste a single extra cent of their hard-earned money.

The city magnet school wasn't just kids from the sticks; it was packed with wealthy city girls. Their faces were so impossibly bright, practically glowing with naive innocence. Looking at them was the first time I truly understood what the phrase "blissfully ignorant" meant.

While they were obsessing over how to customize their uniforms, dropping hundreds on designer bags, and arguing over which artisanal boba shop was better, I was frantically hustling to pirate advanced AP test prep materials. I would sit in the library chewing on stale, dollar-store bread, studying with an intensity so feral I felt like I could physically devour the textbooks in front of me.

Those were three years of being a complete outcast. Three years of zero friends, eating alone, and swallowing the isolation. Three years of feeling the occasional, stupid teenage crushand viciously crushing it to dust before it could even breathe.

The studying was brutal, but compared to my actual life? It was nothing.

Every time my eyes burned from exhaustion, I forced myself to picture that suffocating, pitch-black house. I pictured my closet-sized roomliterally half the square footage of Hunter's. I pictured his grease-slicked face as he shoved handfuls of junk food into his mouth, screaming profanities at his TV screen. All that toxic, terrifying rot acted like a bullwhip, violently lashing my back and screaming at me to keep running.

Don't you dare look back.

Three years evaporated into a blur of ink and caffeine. The afternoon I walked out of my final AP exams, I finally looked up. The leaves were green. Violently, vibrantly green. The ordinary, tree-lined sidewalks surrounding the campus looked like an absolute masterpieceone I hadn't spared a single second to actually look at in three long years.

Standing there in the golden-hour sun, completely out of place among the laughing crowds of wealthy kids, the tears finally spilled over. Margaret was standing by the east wrought-iron gates, waving at me from a distance. I sprinted across the lawn and crashed into her, wrapping my arms around her in a bone-crushing hug.

When the final test scores dropped, I stared at the screen until my vision blurred. A perfect 1600 on the SATs. A flawless 4.0 GPA. Numbers I hadn't even dared to fully dream of.

I called Margaret immediately. I choked on my own sobs so hard I couldn't even form a coherent sentence.

Meanwhile, Hunter was pushing two hundred and twenty pounds as a high school sophomore, rotting on his mattress twenty-four-seven with a controller in his hand. His sheets were permanently stained a greasy grey. His shirts were stiff with dried ketchup and oil spills that would never wash out. He hadn't taken a shower in a week, yet my mother still practically crawled on her knees to bring him fresh meals. All she got in return was him snapping at her to get out of the damn way of his screen.

It twisted my stomach into knots. He was a literal parasite, yet he was still the golden child. I bled myself dry to be perfect, and to them, I was invisible.

I accepted a full-ride offer to Columbia University in the city, just a train ride away from our dead-end town.

Suddenly, the entire town wanted a piece of me. Local politicians and small-business owners swarmed our dirt driveway, desperate for a photo op with the local valedictorian heading to the Ivy League, shoving "scholarship" checks branded with their company logos into my face. Every single cent of that PR money went straight into my parents' pockets. They grinned so hard their faces practically split in half, bragging to anyone who would listen about how they had sacrificed everything to support my education. It made me sick, but it didn't surprise me.

The night before I left for the city, Margaret took me out to dinner. She was just as warm as ever, constantly sliding the best cuts of meat onto my plate. Staring at the new silver streaks threading through her hair, a sharp ache seized my chest. I swallowed hard, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Mom Margaret."

Margaret's fork completely froze. Under the warm restaurant lights, her gaze locked onto mine, her eyes rapidly filling with tears. I took a deep breath, raising my voice to make sure she heard every syllable.

"Mom."

A wet, broken smile broke across her face. "Yeah. Yeah, sweetie."

My biological parents must have caught wind of some local gossip. Someone convinced them that a fancy college education would make me turn my back on my roots. They sat me down and issued a cold, hard ultimatum: I was to wire them ten thousand dollars every single year. If I missed a payment, they swore they would march right onto my elite Ivy League campus and cause a massive scene, exposing me to all my wealthy classmates as a heartless, ungrateful snake who abandoned her own flesh and blood.

Hunter slouched on the couch, smirking like hed just won the lottery.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just stared at them with absolute, dead-eyed calm. "Fine."

It just wasn't time yet. I wasn't powerful enough to sever the rot completely. But I knew exactly how this game ended. Sooner or later, I was going to burn this entire toxic cocoon to ash and walk away without a single backward glance.

I enrolled as a Literature major at Columbia. Freshman year, I maxed out my federal student loans to cover what the grants didn't. For twelve straight months, I existed purely to grind. I buried myself in the library, juggled three off-campus part-time jobs, and ruthlessly hunted down every single extracurricular activity that offered easy credits or extra scholarship money without eating up my shift hours.

Which is exactly how I ended up auditioning for the university's massive annual vocal showcase. I naturally had a slightly raspy, smokey singing voice, and I could actually hold a tune. Back in high school, my choir teacher noticed how painfully withdrawn I was and forced me to solo during practice. She used to joke that I sounded exactly like a young Amy Winehouse.

I practiced in my tiny dorm room for weeks, agonizing over every note. But a few days before the live competition, a brutal reality check hit me right in the face.

Chapter 10

Collegeespecially an Ivy League like Columbiaisn't just about academics. The massive campus events aren't just student competitions; they're high-society debutante balls disguised as extracurriculars. It's the first real proving ground before stepping into the brutal reality of the elite social ladder.

The front rows of the auditorium were always packed with "distinguished alumni" guest judgesusually Fortune 500 executives, trust-fund heirs, and old-money politicians.

The competing students bled themselves dry trying to look the part, wearing their entire net worth on their backs. It wasn't that I was vain, but back then, I didn't even own a single dress that didn't look like it came from a thrift store bargain bin.

Desperate to not look like a complete charity case on stage, I rented a dress. It was the absolute cheapest gown in the rental shop, and it hung awkwardly off my frame, an inch too loose in all the wrong places.

The night of the vocal showcase landed on Christmas Eve. The entire city was dripping in fairy lights and faux snow, and the student union building had a massive, glittering Christmas tree taking up the entire lobby.

Shivering as I rushed from the freezing street into the chaotic backstage area, my mind wandered to stupid, trivial things. Everyone always sang about sleigh bells and winter wonderlands, but growing up on the grimy, dead-end coast, I had never even seen real, pure white snow.

That was the exact night I met Alaric.

I was the second-to-last act on the setlist. I didn't pick a standard pop ballad; I chose a gritty, indie-rock anthem about surviving the undertow. I had been playing it on an endless loop in my dorm room. The heavy bass and crashing cymbals felt exactly like ocean waves tearing through a cage.

The second I stepped up to the microphone to introduce myself, my eyes locked onto Alaric.

It was instantaneous. He was sitting in the corner of the front-row VIP section. Surrounded by balding executives and aging politicians, his sharp, aggressively handsome features and absolute, freezing aura made him stand out like a lethal blade in a room full of butter knives.

Back then, all I knew was that he was a notoriously brilliant, insanely wealthy alumnus. That was it. I just saw the way his tailored suit draped over his massive frame, the sharp angle of his jaw, and the overwhelming, untouchable power radiating off him.

The first half of my set went perfectly. My raspy voice caught the crowd's energy, and as the stage lights dimmed, a sea of cell phone flashlights ignited in the dark auditorium. Hundreds of tiny, swaying lights surrounded me until it felt like I was floating right in the middle of a galaxy.

But right as I hit the final, soaring bridge, my cheap rental dress gave out.

I felt the distinct zip of the cheap plastic zipper splitting open right down my spine.

A wave of scalding humiliation burned my chest. In that split second, my poverty-wired brain panicked over exactly one thing: Please God, let it just be unzipped and not torn. I can't afford to pay for the damages.

But years of suppressing sheer panic paid off. My survival instincts instantly hijacked my body. Without missing a single beat, I reached up and pulled the pin holding my hair up.

A massive cascade of dark hair tumbled down my bare back, perfectly concealing the gaping fabric. The dramatic movement of my hair whipping under the spotlight sent a shockwave through the crowd, instantly igniting a deafening roar of cheers and whistles.

I stepped off the stage into the pitch-black wings, my chest heaving for air. My hands scrambled blindly behind my back, desperately trying to yank the zipper back on track, only to realize the teeth were completely stripped.

My stomach plummeted. The judges were already tallying the final scores out front. I had zero time to change.

I was just about to aggressively comb my hair over my shoulders and pray it held, when I looked up.

The freezing, untouchable billionaire from the front row was standing right in the shadows by the dressing room doors.

My feet glued themselves to the floor. I opened my mouth, scrambling for the right polite, deferential title to usebut before I could make a sound, he closed the distance with a few massive strides.

Without a single word, he dropped his heavy, custom-tailored suit jacket right over my exposed shoulders.

A suffocating wave of rich cedarwood mixed with a faint, dangerous hint of tobacco instantly swallowed me whole. It was the first time in my life I had ever been completely enveloped by raw male pheromones like that.

The heat violently rushed to my cheeks. My survival instinct told me to reject the charity immediately. "Thank you, but I"

"Keep it on," Alaric ordered, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that left absolutely zero room for argument.

I pressed my lips into a tight line. Instead of fighting him, I reached around, undid the silk sash from the waist of my broken dress, and tied it firmly around the outside of his massive jacket to cinch the waist. I quickly rolled up the oversized sleeves, instantly transforming it into an edgy, oversized blazer dress.

I tilted my chin up, flashing him a cool, collected smile. "Thanks."

But by the time the showcase wrapped up, he had vanished into the night.

Chapter 11

I knew his name and his untouchable status, but that information was completely useless. It only served as a brutal reminder that a guy like Alaric was out of my league and out of reach. My mind kept rewinding to that night. I obsessed over exactly how he had noticed the ripped seam. The stage was dark; no one else had seen a thing.

I saved up to have his bespoke suit professionally dry-cleaned, sealing it in plastic and burying it in the absolute back of my cramped dorm closet. With zero connections to his elite world, returning it was impossible. It just sat there, a massive, expensive secret I couldn't touch.

I devoured every book I could get my hands on. I seriously started plotting my own fiction, eventually serializing my work online and scraping together my first small batch of loyal readers. The royalties were barely enough to cover a few cups of coffee, but it was massive validation. I actually started calculating a future where I wouldn't have to break my back working off-campus minimum wage jobs, where I could just pour all my energy into writing.

I kept a strict, agonizing mental ledger. Between three years of high school living expenses, the initial bribe to my parents, and the college tuition Margaret forcefully wired me, I owed her roughly forty thousand dollars. By grinding through my freshman year, I managed to pay back ten thousand.

Margaret constantly called, begging me to slow down. She wanted me to actually experience the magic of college, terrified that I was hustling so hard I was missing the view along the way.

My biological parents, on the other hand, snatched their annual ten-thousand-dollar cut with stone-cold faces, acting like it was their god-given right to bleed me dry. But even with that dead weight, my days were packed and purpose-driven. For the first time in my life, I genuinely thought I could see a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel.

Then came the winter of my sophomore year.

Hunter, who had completely drained our parents' meager savings just to attend a bottom-tier community college, took out massive, high-interest predatory loans just to buy in-game currency. He racked up over a hundred thousand dollars in debt. The debt collectors hacked his contacts, unleashing a wave of violent harassment. Thugs showed up at my parents' front door, screaming threats. The entire trashy town was feasting on the gossip.

My phone rang deep into the night, right as I was locking up after a grueling shift at an off-campus cafe. The winter air was brutal, but the second I heard my mother's voice, ice shot straight through my chest, freezing me down to my fingertips.

"It's a disaster! A total disaster!" she wailed through the receiver, playing the ultimate victim.

"Not a single damn dime!" I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles turned dead white. "What do you think I am? Some bottomless ATM you can just use to bail out that useless piece of trash?! You've already ruined enough of my life!"

The freezing wind stung my eyes, but I refused to let the tears fall. "I'm working myself to the bone"

She violently cut me off.

"We don't care! That teacher of yours said the government pays for your college! You went to the city and your heart turned rotten, didn't it?! You have money and you're hoarding it from your own family! They were rightgirls are just ungrateful snakes! Who knows what kind of sick game you're playing?! Are you trying to kill us? Are you trying to drive me and your father into the ground?!"

The words completely died in my throat. It was actually hilarious. All these years, and I was still stupidly, delusionally hoping they might show a single shred of human decency. All my sympathy evaporated into absolute, freezing disgust.

"You listen to me! If you don't wire the cash, I'll have your brother expose you online! Don't forget, he knows exactly how to ruin you on the internet! And if that doesn't work, I'll drag myself down to your fancy university and lay right in front of the main gates! Let's see if your rich little friends still look at you the same! And if you still refuse to pay, we'll just go hunt down that teacher of yours and bleed the money out of her"

"Don't you dare touch her!" I snapped, pure venom in my voice.

But my mother smiled through the phone, having perfectly struck my only nerve.

"Then you better wire us the cash. Fast."

That was the darkest, most agonizing winter of my entire existence.

Chapter 12

My part-time shifts used to be strictly limited to the weekends. Now, backed into a corner with zero options, I started ditching classes. Days were spent waiting tables at a high-end bistro. Evenings were spent tutoring. If I had any time left over, Id hustle to a downtown dive bar to sing. When I finally dragged myself back to the dorms, terrified of waking my roommates, Id hide under the covers and frantically type out my web novel updates on my phone.

That was exactly when I ran into Alaric again.

He was meeting someone at the bistro where I worked. My coworker, Gemma, took his order, then practically sprinted to the back station, aggressively grabbing my arm to whisper in my ear.

"That's my first time seeing Alaric in person. I've only ever seen his face on the cover of Forbes."

Ever since that night at the showcase, I had looked him up. He was top-tier, untouchable billionaire aristocracy. His family's empire completely dominated everything from private healthcare and luxury real estate to shipping logistics and entertainment media. His grandfather practically built the city's commercial district from the ground up. His fathers generation was notoriously messy, constantly plastering the tabloids with illegitimate scandals. But Alaric was the only son of the actual, legal wifemaking him the undisputed golden boy and the sole heir to the throne.

I had been dying to look, but I didn't want to blow my cover. Since Gemma was already staring, I finally followed her gaze.

His side profile was impossibly sharp. He wore pure, lethal corporate elite. His custom-tailored suit jacket was casually draped over the back of his chair. His crisp dress shirt was meticulously rolled up to his forearms, revealing the taut, heavy lines of muscle beneath his skin. A multimillion-dollar watch gripped his wrista brand I later learned was an Audemars Piguet.

He carried an effortless, suffocating authority, completely different from the flashy, obnoxious trust-fund kids constantly begging for attention online. Instead of acting pretentious, he looked like a man operating on a brutal schedule. He practically inhaled a two-hundred-dollar black truffle steak like he was just fueling a machine.

When he finally got up to settle the bill, I brushed past him near the register. He didn't spare me a single glance.

It was just a brief, meaningless brush of shoulders.

I didn't expect to see him again less than twelve hours later.

By day, I was the perfect, invisible server in a pressed white button-down and minimal makeup. By night, I was zipped into a tight leather jacket, my eyes rimmed with heavy, smoked-out liner, belting out tracks on a dimly lit stage. I only worked the early set. Once the clock struck midnight, that exact stage transitioned to pole dancing. The lighting in the club was a hazy, saturated neon redmeticulously designed to lower inhibitions and blur the lines between intoxication and lust.

Alaric lounged in the center VIP booth like a king of the underworld, his heavy presence making everyone else in the room invisible. His dark eyes locked onto me, tracking my every move like a lethal predator zeroing in on his prey. The second our eyes met, a dangerous spark ignited the air between us.

I recognized the guy sitting next to him. It was the same business partner from the bistro earlier that day. The rest of the men in the booth reeked of old money and untraceable power.

That night, I burned through my usual setlist of raspy, gritty rock covers. But for the closing track, I didn't know what possessed me. I stepped up to the mic and belted out the exact same indie-rock survival anthem I had sung at the campus showcase.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Alaric's head snapping up. His burning gaze completely pinned me to the stage.

He didn't summon me to his VIP booth that night. Instead, he simply had the bartender send over a drink.

For the next few weeks, he showed up every single night. And every single night, a drink was sent to the stage.

Chapter 13

Deep into the night, the club's energy spiked. The city's underground nightlife was just getting started.

I was scrubbing the heavy stage makeup off my face in the dressing room when Roxanne, the club's co-owner, slid a folded slip of paper right across my vanity mirror. An exclusive residential address was scrawled across it.

She took a slow drag from her cigarette, her glossy red lips exhaling a thick cloud of smoke as she studied my reflection. Her tone was completely deadpan. "Alaric wants you. Two hundred grand."

It wasn't my first night working the club scene. I knew exactly what that piece of paper meant. The sheer weight of that number hit me like a physical blow, followed instantly by a burning, suffocating wave of humiliation. Sure, some sick, twisted part of me had sung that specific song hoping he'd recognize me, even if I couldn't figure out exactly why.

But I never wanted this. I never wanted to be bought.

I let out a heavy breath, violently rubbing my temples. "Thanks, Roxanne, but I'll pass."

Roxanne raised a perfectly arched eyebrow, looking unsurprised. "Suit yourself, Fallon. Don't sweat it. Guys in his league don't force the issue. They don't have to."

When I started college, Margaret had helped me legally change my name to Fallon. She told me the name meant a guiding light, a spark that could cut through the absolute dark. She wanted my path forward to be blindingly bright.

Outside, the city was pitch black. Roxanne crushed her cigarette into an ashtray and leaned against the counter.

"Alaric doesn't play around with the club girls. He's drop-dead gorgeous, and he's clean. You wouldn't be losing out. What he can drop casually in a single night is more than you could scrape together in three lifetimes of breaking your back. How high someone climbs in this world is just a brutal combination of hustle and pure luck. The world is built on dirty little shortcuts. Everyone pretends they're above it, but when the golden ticket is actually shoved in their face? Very few people stay holy. This might be your golden ticket, Fallon. Are you seriously walking away?"

Roxanne had been surviving the streets since she was fifteen. She was thirty-four now. Two decades of clawing her way up the nightlife ladder gave her an undeniable, razor-sharp street logic. I had heard enough of her stories to know she wasn't entirely wrong.

But still

"I'll pass."

Even back then, I knew the golden rule of survival. Every single gift from the universe comes with a hidden, devastating price tag. I forced a dry smile. "Even if the universe handed it to me, Roxanne, I don't think I could afford the tax."

Roxanne shot me a long, calculating look. She just lit another cigarette and didn't say another word.

I thought that was the absolute end of it. I thought I had dodged a bullet.

But then, the floor completely caved in.

Margaret was sick.

Lung cancer.

I was sprinting out the back door of the bistro, rushing to make it to my evening tutoring gig, when Gavin's name flashed on my phone screen. Margaret's son. He was a few years older than me, just stepping into the corporate meat grinder. Over the summer, Margaret had practically glowed with pride telling me he finally landed a solid, secure government job. Everything had finally fallen into place. I was at an Ivy League, Gavin was set, and she could finally breathe and coast toward retirement.

My feet stopped dead on the concrete. The freezing wind whipped through my thin jacket, but the absolute ice shooting through my veins was a thousand times colder.

Gavin's voice over the phone was agonizingly strained.

"When Mom decided to pull you out of that town, we all backed her up. We supported you. But she's sick now. I barely have any savings. Dad's health has been deteriorating, the blood pressure meds are draining us dry"

He swallowed hard, the sound violently sharp through the receiver.

"I'm calling because I need to ask a massive favor. The money Mom loaned you could you possibly pay it back? It's not an immediate emergency, I can hold the line for a little bit longer I just needed to put it on your radar."

His voice trailed off into a suffocating silence. A hollow, broken laugh scraped out of his throat.

"Fallon, I didn't even have the face to make this call. Mom specifically ordered me not to tell you. But we are entirely out of options. Dad is literally calling realtors to sell the house."

Chapter 14

It felt like I had just been brutally backhanded across the face. My cheek literally burned. My lips parted, and a scalding heat violently rushed to the back of my eyes, but when I finally spoke, my voice was dead cold.

"Is Margaret okay?"

"She's stable for now. But she'll likely need to be transferred to a specialist facility in the city for continued treatment"

"How much are you short?"

His voice strained. "Insurance covers a fraction, but they demand the deductibles upfront. The surgery costs are one thing, but the chemo and aftercare We're trying to pull strings, but on your end"

"Okay," I said softly, cutting him off. "Don't panic. I'll figure it out."

I didn't even process whatever he said next.

When night fell, I dragged myself to the club for my set. Alaric, who had vanished for over two weeks, was back.

Once again, I closed with that same indie survival track. Before, it was just a subconscious cry for attention. This time, it was a calculated target.

The second the melody hit, Alaric stopped mid-conversation. His dark, impenetrable gaze snapped straight to the stage, locking entirely onto me.

When I stepped off stage, the club was practically exploding with bodies, way too chaotic for midnight. For the first time ever, I didn't stop to scrub off my heavy stage makeup. I grabbed the dry-cleaned suit I had been stashing in my locker and sprinted out the back door.

The VIP booth was already empty. But he couldn't have gone far. I shoved my way through the suffocating crowd, bursting into the freezing street. The winter air was slicing, but a cold sweat was already breaking out on my forehead.

Finally, under the harsh glow of a streetlamp, I spotted him.

He was taking a call, twirling an unlit cigarette between his long fingers. His profile was ruthlessly sharp, but the dim yellow light softened the lethal edges, making him look just a fraction less untouchable.

I slammed to a halt a few feet away, planting myself directly in his peripheral vision. Alaric hung up. His gaze flicked over, and the hand raising a lighter to his cigarette completely froze.

I sucked in a sharp breath, forced my legs to move, and closed the gap.

"Mr. Alaric. Your jacket. I'm returning it."

His eyes dragged down to the plastic-wrapped suit, then slowly dragged back up to my face, dark amusement dancing in his pupils. His voice dropped to a low, magnetic gravel, asking a question we both knew the real meaning to.

This was a trap of absolute dominance he had set for me, and I had no choice but to completely drown in this fatal attraction