Damien POV
I was three fingers deep into a bottle of Macallan 25—the same scotch Richard Sterling used to pour for me in his office when I was his golden boy—when Isabella's text arrived. The irony of drinking the dead bastard's favorite whiskey while plotting the destruction of his legacy wasn't lost on me.
But her message stopped me cold.
"Then you'd better make sure you don't miss."
I stared at the screen for a full minute, reading those eight words over and over until they burned themselves into my retinas. This wasn't the response I'd expected from the sheltered princess who'd trembled in my arms this afternoon. This was a declaration of war from someone who'd finally found her teeth.
Interesting.
My penthouse office was dark except for the city lights streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. Forty-three floors below, late-night traffic moved like blood through arteries, carrying people to their small lives and smaller dreams. None of them knew that their world was about to shift, that one of the city's oldest financial dynasties was about to crumble into dust.
None of them knew that Isabella Sterling had just thrown down a gauntlet I'd been waiting seven years to pick up.
I set down my glass and speed-dialed Sarah Martinez. She answered on the second ring, despite the fact that it was nearly midnight.
"Sir?"
"I need everything moved up," I said, standing to pace the length of my office. "Phase two starts tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" There was a pause as Sarah processed the timeline change. "Sir, we planned a gradual escalation over several weeks. If we move too fast—"
"Plans change. I want Sterling Industries under maximum pressure by close of business Friday."
"That's three days."
"Then we'd better work fast." I stopped pacing and pressed my palm against the cool glass, looking out at the glittering lights of Sterling Tower. Even at this hour, several floors were still illuminated. Isabella was probably there, poring over files and financial reports, trying to find some weakness in my armor.
She wouldn't find one. I'd spent seven years making sure of that.
"What triggered the acceleration?" Sarah asked, and I could hear the sound of her laptop booting up. Sarah Martinez was the best chief of staff money could buy—brilliant, ruthless, and completely loyal. She'd been with me since the early days of Cross Enterprises, when we were still operating out of a shared office space and surviving on ambition and spite.
"Isabella Sterling is more dangerous than I anticipated," I said, which was both completely true and not nearly the whole story.
The whole story was that her text had made my blood sing with something that felt dangerously like pride. The girl I'd known at eighteen had been fierce in her own way, but she'd also been sheltered, protected by wealth and privilege from the harsher realities of the world. This Isabella—the one who'd stood toe-to-toe with me in that conference room, who'd met my psychological warfare with a challenge of her own—this Isabella was something else entirely.
This Isabella was worth destroying everything for.
Focus, Cross. She's still the enemy.
"What do you need?" Sarah asked.
"Start with their biggest client, Morrison Construction. I want their contract with Sterling Industries terminated by noon tomorrow."
"On what grounds?"
"We don't need grounds. We own forty percent of Morrison's debt through subsidiary holdings. Call in the loans."
There was a pause as Sarah ran the numbers in her head. "That'll force Morrison into Chapter 11."
"Not my problem." The words came out colder than I felt. Morrison Construction employed eight hundred people, many of whom had families to feed. But sentiment was a luxury I couldn't afford. Not when Isabella Sterling was out there plotting my downfall with those brilliant green eyes and that sharp mind her father had trained so well.
"I'll have the paperwork ready by morning," Sarah said. "What else?"
"Pemberton Industries. I want to know why they really canceled their contract with Sterling Industries last month."
"I thought we already knew. Cost overruns and timeline issues."
"Dig deeper. Someone convinced Pemberton to walk away from a two-hundred-million-dollar project. I want to know who and why."
Because nothing about Sterling Industries' recent troubles felt organic. The company had been struggling, yes, but the cascade of failures over the past eighteen months felt... orchestrated. Someone else had been circling Sterling Industries like a vulture, and I wanted to know who was muscling in on my territory.
"I'll have a full report by morning," Sarah promised. "Anything else?"
I hesitated, then decided to trust my instincts. "Run a complete background check on Isabella Sterling. I want to know everything about the past seven years. Where she went to school, who she dated, what she's been doing since she graduated."
"Sir, we already have her basic information."
"I want more than basic. I want to know what makes her tick. What she cares about, what she fears, where she's vulnerable." I paused, remembering the way she'd looked at me when I'd pressed her against those windows—breathless and defiant and achingly beautiful. "I want to know everything."
After ending the call, I poured myself another scotch and settled into the leather chair behind my desk. Isabella's personnel file was already open on my computer—the same file I'd been obsessively updating for years, tracking her progress through business school, her internships, her gradual integration into Sterling Industries' upper management.
But looking at it now, I realized how superficial my knowledge really was. I knew the facts of her life but nothing about how she'd lived it. I knew she'd graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Business School, but I didn't know if she'd been happy there. I knew she'd had a brief relationship with a fellow MBA student named James Whitmore, but I didn't know if she'd loved him.
I didn't know if she'd ever thought about me during those seven years, or if I'd been nothing more than a teenage mistake she'd forgotten the moment I disappeared from her life.
Does it matter?
It shouldn't matter. This was about justice, about collecting a debt that Richard Sterling had owed me since the day he'd destroyed my life. Isabella was just collateral damage, a necessary sacrifice on the altar of my revenge.
But even as I tried to convince myself of that, I couldn't stop thinking about the way she'd felt in my arms this afternoon. The way her pulse had jumped when I'd called her bella, the way her breath had caught when I'd whispered those intimate memories against her ear.
She'd responded to me. Despite everything, despite seven years of silence and hurt and carefully constructed hatred, she'd responded to my touch like her body remembered what we'd once been to each other.
What if she's telling the truth? What if she really didn't know what her father did to me?
The thought was dangerous, seductive in ways that had nothing to do with physical attraction. Because if Isabella had been as much a victim of her father's machinations as I was, if she'd spent seven years wondering what happened to me the way I'd spent seven years hating her...
If that was true, then everything I'd built, everything I'd planned, everything I'd sacrificed to get to this moment was based on a lie.
My phone rang, jarring me out of increasingly dangerous thoughts. The caller ID showed a number I didn't recognize, but something about it felt familiar.
"Cross," I answered.
"Hello, Damien."
The voice was like ice water in my veins. Cultured, confident, with just a hint of an accent that spoke of old money and older sins.
Marcus Blackwood.
"I wondered when you'd surface," I said, keeping my voice carefully neutral despite the fact that every muscle in my body had gone tense. "It's been, what, three years since our last conversation?"
"Three years, two months, and sixteen days," Marcus said with the precision of a man who kept careful track of his enemies. "But who's counting?"
Marcus Blackwood was everything I'd once thought I wanted to be—born into wealth, educated at the finest schools, connected to the kind of power that opened doors and buried problems. He was also completely without conscience, utterly ruthless, and had made it clear on several occasions that he considered Cross Enterprises' success a personal insult.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" I asked.
"I hear you're making moves on Sterling Industries."
Of course he'd heard. Marcus made it his business to know about every major corporate acquisition in the city, especially ones that might affect his own interests.
"Cross Enterprises is always exploring new opportunities," I said carefully.
"Of course you are." His laugh was silk over steel. "But Sterling Industries isn't just any opportunity, is it? Not for you."
The implication was clear. Marcus knew about my history with the Sterling family, knew that this acquisition was personal in ways that went far beyond business.
"What do you want, Blackwood?"
"I want to make you an offer," he said. "Stay away from Sterling Industries, and I'll make it worth your while. There are other companies, other opportunities that don't require you to... revisit painful memories."
The threat was subtle but unmistakable. Marcus knew enough about my past to cause problems if he chose to. The question was whether he was stupid enough to try.
"And if I decline your generous offer?"
"Then you'll discover that Sterling Industries has more enemies than just you," Marcus said smoothly. "And some of us have been playing this game longer than you have."
The line went dead, leaving me staring at my phone with a mixture of anger and calculation. Marcus Blackwood's involvement changed everything. Whatever game I'd thought I was playing with Isabella and Sterling Industries, it was apparently much more complicated than I'd realized.
But if Marcus thought he could intimidate me into backing down, he'd seriously underestimated what seven years of carefully controlled rage could accomplish.
I opened my laptop and began typing a new message to Sarah, outlining the aggressive timeline we'd need to stay ahead of whatever Marcus was planning. But my thoughts kept drifting to Isabella, alone in her father's tower, probably still awake and plotting her own strategy for survival.
Tomorrow, bella. Tomorrow we'll see exactly how dangerous you really are.
My phone buzzed with another text, and for a moment I thought it might be another message from Isabella. Instead, it was from an unknown number:
"Some games have more players than you realize. Be careful who you trust. —A Friend"
I stared at the message, every instinct I'd developed over seven years of corporate warfare screaming danger. Someone was watching, someone who knew enough about my plans to issue warnings.
The question was whether that someone was trying to help me or destroy me.
Only one way to find out.
I deleted the message and poured myself one last drink, standing at the window that offered a perfect view of Sterling Tower. Somewhere in that building, Isabella was probably still awake, still fighting, still refusing to surrender despite the odds stacked against her.
Good. I wouldn't want this to be easy.
Tomorrow, the real war would begin. And Isabella Sterling was about to learn that when Damien Cross went hunting, he never missed his target.
Even when that target was the only woman he'd ever loved.