Ava
Rain hammered the cracked sidewalk outside The Rusty Anchor like it wanted to drown the whole city. I pushed through the heavy wooden door at exactly 11:47 p.m. on June 12, 2020, soaked to my underwear, mascara already running black rivers down my cheeks. My thrift-store dress clung to me like a second, very sad skin.
I didn't care.
Tonight my entire world exploded.
My mother—my only family—had looked me dead in the eye three hours earlier and said, "You're twenty-three, Ava. You're not a child anymore. Get out." She'd handed me a black garbage bag with my clothes, my ancient laptop, and the one photo I had of us smiling when I was six. Then she slammed the door so hard the neighbor's dog started barking.
No explanation. No goodbye hug. Just gone.
I had forty-seven dollars in my wallet, no job since the coffee shop fired me for "accidentally" dropping three lattes on a rude influencer, and nowhere to sleep.
So I walked.
And walked.
Until my sneakers squished into this dive bar on the edge of Lower Manhattan, the kind of place that smelled like spilled beer, regret, and cheap pine cleaner. Neon signs buzzed RED and BLUE over the sticky bar top. A jukebox in the corner wailed some old country song about lost love. Perfect.
I dropped onto the last stool at the far end, the one nobody wanted because the leg wobbled. My elbows hit the wood. My forehead followed.
"Whiskey. Cheapest you got," I mumbled to the bartender without looking up.
He slid a cloudy glass toward me. I didn't ask what brand. I just threw it back. Fire raced down my throat and exploded in my empty stomach. Good. I wanted to feel something other than this gaping hole in my chest.
I ordered another.
And another.
By the fourth, the room tilted like a funhouse. Faces blurred. Voices smeared together. I laughed—loud, ugly, hiccupping—at absolutely nothing.
That was when I noticed him.
He sat three stools down, alone, staring into a half-empty tumbler of something dark amber like it had personally betrayed him. Black suit. No tie. Top two buttons undone. Dark hair falling over his forehead in a way that looked expensive even when messy. Jaws so sharp it could cut glass. Shoulders wide enough to block out the rest of the miserable bar.
He looked like money.
He looked like pain.
Our eyes met for half a second.
I looked away first.
Too pretty. Too dangerous. Too everything I wasn't tonight.
But the whiskey had other plans.
I slid off my stool—almost fell—caught myself on the bar, giggled like an idiot, and somehow ended up right next to him. My hip bumped his thigh. He didn't flinch.
"Sorry," I slurred. "Gravity's mad at me tonight."
He turned his head slowly. Gray eyes—storm-cloud gray—locked on mine. No smile. No warmth. Just… something raw flickering behind the ice.
"You okay?" His voice was low, rough, like he hadn't used it in hours.
I laughed again. Too loud. "Do I look okay?"
He studied me. Really studied me. Like I was a puzzle he didn't expect to find here.
"No," he said simply. "You look like you're drowning."
Tears burned behind my eyes. I blinked them back hard.
"Yeah, well… water's rising fast."
He lifted his glass, tipped it toward me. "Then drink until you float."
I clinked my empty glass against his. "To float."
We drank.
And drank.
And talked.
Not names. Not jobs. Not futures. Just… hurt.
He told me—without details—that someone he trusted had stabbed him in the back today. A deal. A betrayal. A knife between the ribs he never saw coming. His voice cracked once. Just once. He covered it with another swallow.
I told him my mother threw me away like trash. I told him I had nowhere to go. I told him I was scared I'd never stop feeling this small.
He listened.
Really listened.
No pity. No judgment. Just quiet, angry understanding.
At some point the bar emptied out.
At some point his hand brushed mine on the scarred wood.
At some point I leaned in and whispered, "I don't want to be alone tonight."
He looked at me for a long, burning second.
Then he stood, tossed a stack of bills on the bar—way too much—and held out his hand.
I took it.
We didn't speak in the cab.
We didn't speak in the elevator of the sleek hotel three blocks away.
The second the suite door clicked shut behind us, everything exploded.
His mouth crashed into mine—hard, desperate, tasting like whiskey and rage and something sweeter I couldn't name. My fingers twisted in his shirt, yanking him closer. He lifted me like I weighed nothing, my legs wrapping around his waist as he backed me against the wall.
Clothes hit the floor in a frantic trail.
His hands were everywhere—rough, reverent, shaking.
Mine clawed at his back, his shoulders, begging for more, for harder, for anything that would make the ache inside me stop screaming.
We fell onto the bed.
Skin on skin.
Breath on breath.
He whispered my name once—only once—like it hurt to say it.
I whispered his—Damian—right before the world tilted again, slower this time, deeper.
We moved together like we'd been starving for years.
Like this was the only place either of us belonged.
When it ended, we didn't pull apart.
We stayed tangled, chests heaving, hearts hammering against each other.
His fingers traced lazy circles on my spine.
I pressed my face into his neck and breathed him in—clean soap, expensive cologne, and something darker, like smoke.
"Don't go," I mumbled against his skin, already half-asleep, already terrified this would disappear when the sun came up.
He tightened his arm around me.
"I'm not going anywhere," he murmured.
Liar.
Morning came too fast.
Sunlight sliced through the curtains like knives.
I woke up alone.
The bed was cold on his side.
His suit was gone.
His scent still lingered on the pillow.
But no note.
No number.
No name card.
Nothing.
I sat up, sheets pooling around my waist, and stared at the empty space beside me.
Tears came fast and silent.
I cried until my throat hurt.
Then I dragged myself into the shower, scrubbed until my skin turned pink, dressed in yesterday's wrinkled clothes, and walked out of that hotel with forty-seven dollars, a pounding headache, and a secret already growing inside me that I wouldn't discover for another six weeks.
I never saw him again.
Not for five years.
Not until the day I walked into Blackwood Enterprises, dripping wet from another rainstorm, clutching a resume that had been rejected nineteen times already, praying this cold, terrifying billionaire CEO wouldn't laugh me out of his office.
I had no idea the man behind the desk—the one glaring at me like I was a personal insult—was the same man who'd held me like I mattered.
The same man who'd left without a word.
The same man whose children were waiting for me at home—five-year-old twins who asked every single night why Daddy never came to get them.
I squared my shoulders, forced a smile, and knocked on the glass door.
"Mr. Blackwood? I'm Ava Monroe. I'm here for the secretary interview."
He looked up.
Those storm-gray eyes locked on mine.
For one heartbeat, the world stopped.
Recognition flickered—tiny, buried, impossible.
Then his jaw tightened.
"You're late," he said, voice like ice.
And just like that, the past slammed into the present—hard enough to break everything.
I stepped inside anyway.
The door clicked shut behind me.
And I had no idea the nightmare—and the miracle—was only beginning.