AUTHOR
The low hum of the city through the windows felt like a held breath. Reomen's plan hung in the air between them, a detailed, ruthless blueprint for financial dismantling.
Paige listened, her analyst's mind mapping the moves, but a deeper, more personal question clawed its way to the surface, breaking through her professional focus.
"Why?" The word was out before she could stop it, softer than she intended, but it cut through his strategic monologue like a knife.
She met his gaze, her own filled with a confusion that went beyond business. "You have your own empire. You've already won. Why are you so set on personally destroying them?."
Reomen went still. The smug CEO vanished, replaced by something colder, older. The shadows in the room seemed to deepen around him. He turned from the cityscape, his eyes glinting with a dark, unfamiliar light.
"You think this is about winning a business rivalry?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet. A humorless, brittle smile touched his lips. "You think I built all of this," he gestured around the penthouse, a sweeping motion that encompassed his entire empire, "just to one-up your father in the financial pages?"
He took a slow step toward her, the space between them crackling with a new, heavier tension.
"When I was ten years old, my father worked for yours. He was the gardener who tended to the grounds of your family's estate, though I doubt Shunsuke Rimestone ever knew our last name. To him, my father was just 'the gardener,' a function, not a man."
He paused, his voice cold and precise, each word a carefully placed stone on a path he had long been building.
"I used to help him after school. I'd pull weeds, gather clippings. Your father worked him to the bone, demanding perfection for his parties and galas, never seeing the man sweating under the sun to achieve it. One summer, he pushed him too far. My father collapsed from heatstroke, and it settled into a fierce pneumonia. We had no money for a proper doctor. Desperate, I went to the main house."
His jaw tightened, his eyes glazing over as if he were seeing the grand front doors all over again.
"I found your father on the terrace, sipping a drink. I begged him for help, for an advance on wages, for anything. I told him my father was dying. He didn't even give me a second look. He simply waved a hand to a servant and said, 'Get this grubby little urchin off my property before he scares the guests.' They threw me out onto the gravel drive. My father died that night."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a low, seething whisper that seemed to suck the air from the room.
Paige felt the blood drain from her face. She couldn't speak.
"We lost our apartment after that," Reomen continued, the words flat and hard, each one a stone dropped into the silence. "My mother took on three jobs. She… she cleaned offices at night, just like my father had. She scrubbed floors until her hands were raw and bled. In the mornings, she worked in a laundromat, and in the afternoons, she packaged fish at a market."
He looked away, not out of weakness, but as if the memory was a physical thing in the room he refused to acknowledge.
"The smell of bleach and rotting scales never left our tiny, single room. It was in her hair, her clothes. It was in my dreams. She never complained. She just… diminished. She became a ghost, working herself into an early grave for a son who could offer her nothing but a vow of vengeance."
He turned his gaze back to her, and it was colder than before.
"She died five years later. Broken, tired, and forgotten by the world your father ruled. I was fifteen. Truly alone. And my vow was no longer a boy's angry promise. It was the foundation upon which I built my entire life. Every deal, every acquisition, every late night was fueled by the memory of bleach, fish rot, and the sound of your father's dismissive wave."
"So you see," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper that was more terrifying than any shout, "this isn't business. This is personal. I am simply digging up the past your family buried and presenting you with the bill. And it is finally time to pay."
He took another step, his presence overwhelming. "I am going to take everything from him. Not because I want his company. But because I want him to know what it feels like to be on his knees. I want him to feel that same powerless, gut-wrenching humiliation before he loses it all."
He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a whisper that was all the more terrifying for its control.
"And you," he said, his eyes boring into hers, "are going to help me do it. Not just as my financial consultant. But as a Rimestone. You are going to help me tear down your own house, stone by gilded stone. That is the real game. That is the only thing that matters."
The revelation hung in the air, shifting the entire foundation of their arrangement. It was no longer just about her revenge or her debt. It was about his. And his was born from a deep, personal wound that made her family's slights against her look like petty squabbles. The stakes had just become terrifyingly, profoundly personal.
Paige absorbed the weight of his history, the story settling like a lead cloak around her shoulders.
The image of a young, humiliated Haruto was now seared into her mind, reframing everything she thought she knew about the man standing before her. Yet, one thread of confusion remained, stubborn and frayed.
She nodded slowly, processing it all, but her brow remained furrowed. "I understand the why," she began, her voice quieter, more hesitant than before. "But... why use me?"
The question hung between them. She looked up, meeting his dark, intense gaze, her own filled with a genuine, searching confusion.
"You said it yourself. I treated you the same way. I was a spoiled brat. I teased you. I called you names. I made you stay outside with the gardeners while my friends and I played." The admission tasted like ash, a confession of her own complicity in the system he hated. "So why would you want my help? Why would you want the person who participated in your humiliation to be the one to help you serve it back to my family? Shouldn't you hate me most of all?"
A slow, complex smile touched Reomen's lips—not a smirk of triumph, but something colder, more calculating. It was the look of a grandmaster revealing his endgame.
"Precisely because of that," he said, his voice low and deliberate. He took a step closer, his eyes holding hers captive. "You weren't a bystander, Black Cat. You were a participant. You were the princess in the castle, looking down from the balcony. You understood the power structure because you benefited from it. You knew exactly where I stood because you were the one who helped put me there."
He let the truth of that settle, watching the flicker of shame in her eyes.
"That's why you're the perfect weapon. You know every crack in the foundation. You know every sin they've tried to hide. You know their language, their tells, their arrogance." His gaze intensified, sharp and unforgiving. "And your participation now? It isn't just revenge. It's penance. It's you finally understanding the cost of that balcony view and choosing to tear the whole damn castle down yourself."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper that was both a threat and a promise.
"I don't want an outsider's help. I want an insider's betrayal. And yours, Black Cat," he said, the old nickname now laden with new, darker meaning, "will be the most devastating blow of all."
A dry, humorless laugh escaped her lips. She rolled her eyes, a gesture of defiance that felt both childish and utterly necessary. His grand speech about penance and insider betrayal was almost too much to bear.
"Save the dramatic monologue for someone who buys into it," she said, her voice laced with a weary sarcasm that cut through his intensity. She crossed her arms, creating a barrier between them. "My reasons for being in this... transaction... have nothing to do with your childhood trauma or finding penance for mine."
She held his gaze, her own eyes sparking with a cold fire that was entirely her own.
"I want what was always rightfully mine. The power, the control, the legacy my name is supposed to represent, not the gilded cage they tried to force me into." Her voice hardened, each word a sharp, deliberate strike. "And I want to watch them burn for thinking they could take it from me. Your revenge and my revenge just happen to be traveling in the same direction. Don't for a second think I'm your personal instrument of atonement."
She uncrossed her arms and took a step toward him, meeting his intimidating presence with a challenge of her own.
"You may see an insider's betrayal," she stated, her tone flat and final. "I see a hostile takeover. Now, about this gala. What's the first move?"
A smirk played on his lips. She was so close he could see the faint gold flecks in her defiant eyes, feeling the heat of her anger radiating between them.
The tension was a physical thing, a live wire humming in the scant space separating their bodies. Her words were a challenge, and in that moment, with her chin tilted up and fire in her gaze, she was utterly breathtaking.
The urge to close the distance, to finally crush her mouth to his and see if she tasted like the fire she spat, was a sudden, violent pull in his gut. His gaze dropped to her lips.
But he didn't move.
Instead, he let the smirk widen, a cold, calculated mask slipping perfectly into place. He took a single, deliberate step back, breaking the spell, putting a professional distance between them once more.
"The first move," he said, his voice smooth and devoid of the heat that had been there a second before, "is finding you a dress that doesn't look like it came from a corporate clearance rack. One worthy of a queen reclaiming her throne."
He turned his back to her, walking toward his desk as if the charged moment had never happened.
"And try to look less like you want to stab me in the neck. At least when we're in public."
The door to Reomen's office opened without a knock, breaking the tense silence. Denki Fujii stepped inside, his presence immediately filling the room with a calm, capable energy.
He was dressed in an impeccably tailored Tom Ford suit that spoke of his role—professional, observant, and always in control.
Reomen didn't look surprised. He gestured casually toward Denki, his eyes still fixed on Paige with that infuriatingly knowing glint.
"Paige, this is Denki Fujii. My head of security, and my best friend." His tone was matter-of-fact, but the weight behind the title was clear. "Denki, this is Paige Rimestone. Our new Financial Consultant."
Denki offered a slight, polite bow of his head, his expression neutral but his eyes sharp and assessing. He had a handsome, reliable face, the kind that inspired instant trust. "Ms. Rimestone. A pleasure."
Reomen's lips curled into a faint, cold smile. "Denki will be your shadow at the gala. His job is to make sure what happened at the last event…" He paused, letting the memory of the spilled wine hang in the air. "…doesn't happen again. No more… clumsy accidents."
Denki's gaze remained steady on Paige, a quiet assurance in his demeanor. "It will be my priority to ensure your evening is uninterrupted," he said, his voice smooth and reassuring. "No one will get close enough to cause a disturbance."
Paige looked from Denki's composed face back to Reomen's smug one. The unspoken message was clear: she was being assigned a bodyguard—a watchdog—to keep her in line and protect the asset. It was another move in his game, another way to assert control.
She offered a tight, polite nod to Denki. "Looking forward to it," she said, her voice cool and professional, giving nothing away.
But inside, the wheels were turning. Another player had just entered the board. And she had no idea he was playing for the other side.