Chapter 6 You don't want this

Fiona:

The taxi door slammed shut behind me with a finality that ran through my bones. I clutched my single bag; everything I had left in the world and watched Dustin's smug face disappear behind the mansion's towering doors. My mansion. The one I'd helped pay for with connections he never knew I had.

"Where to, miss?" The driver's voice cut through the haze of my fury.

I gave him my father's address, my voice steady despite the storm raging inside me. But as the car pulled away from the curb, the adrenaline that had carried me through the confrontation began to disappear, leaving something raw and jagged inside me.

The city blurred past the window, but all I could see was Paige's vicious smile as she'd shoved those photographs against my chest. The staged shots of me limp in that creep's arms-the same creep who would have done God knows what if not for... 'Him'.

The memory hit me like a punch to the gut. Strong arms catching me as my knees buckled. Brown eyes filled with concern, not hunger. The way he'd carried me upstairs, gentle despite his obvious strength. How he'd tried to pull away when I kissed him, tried to protect me from myself.

"You don't want this. That's the drug talking."

But I had wanted it. God help me, I still wanted it. Even now, with my world crumbling around me, my body remembered the way he'd traced my bare breast with his thumb, kissing me passionately at the same time while I maoned with utmost want.

A bitter laugh escaped my throat. The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd spent three years married to a man who'd never truly seen me, never made me feel the way a stranger had in one night. Dustin had touched my body countless times, but that ma, that beautiful, dangerous stranger, had touched something deeper. Something I'd thought was dead.

"You alright back there?" The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror, concern creasing his weathered features.

"I'm fine," I lied, but my voice cracked. Because I wasn't fine. I was the furthest thing from fine.

The tears came without warning, hot, angry tears that burned tracks down my cheeks. I pressed my palm against my mouth, trying to muffle the sound, but a sob escaped anyway.

Three years. Three years of believing in love, in marriage, in the future we'd planned together. Three years of supporting his dreams while hiding my own identity, my own power, because I'd wanted to be loved for who I was, not what I could give him.

What a fucking fool I'd been.

The driver pulled over, rolling down the windows to let in the cool evening air. "Take your time," he said quietly, stepping out to give me privacy. "No rush."

I covered my face with both hands, letting the grief pour out of me in waves. I wasn't just crying for my marriage-I was crying for the girl who'd left home at fifteen in anger against her father, so desperate to forge her own path that she'd walked away from everything. The girl who'd fallen in love with the wrong man and convinced herself it was fate. The woman who'd been drugged and nearly assaulted, saved by a stranger who'd shown her more tenderness in one night than her husband had in three years.

But beneath the grief, something else stirred. Something hot and unforgiving. It was Rage.

They thought they'd won. Thought they'd broken me. Dustin with his smug superiority, Paige with her vicious triumph. They had no idea who they were dealing with. They saw a heartbroken wife, a woman with nothing left to lose.

They didn't see the Velmera heiress who'd been playing the long game her entire life.

I wiped my eyes, my reflection in the window showing a woman I barely recognized. Red-rimmed eyes, tear-stained cheeks, but something fierce burning in my gaze. This wasn't how I'd planned to return home. I'd imagined it would be on my terms, successful and independent, proving to my father that I didn't need the family name to make something of myself.

Instead, I was crawling back broken and empty-handed.

But maybe that was exactly what I needed. Maybe I'd spent too long trying to be someone I wasn't. Maybe it was time to remember who I really was.

The driver returned, settling back into his seat. "Ready to go?"

"Yes." My voice was steady now, steel threading through the words. "Let's go home."

As we drove through the city, I found myself thinking about him again. The stranger.

"Forget about him, Fiona." I said patting my head like I was a child, but I knew that, whatever happened next, wherever this path led me, I'd carry that night with me. The reminder that I was more than just a discarded wife. I was a woman capable of inspiring desire, of taking what I wanted, of being wanted in return.

The taxi slowed as we approached the imposing gates of the Velmera estate, and reality hit me like a slap. The sight of those familiar iron bars sent a complex mix of emotions through me-shame, relief, anticipation, dread.

"This is as far as I can take you, miss," the driver said apologetically. "Private estate. They don't allow public transport or unregistered vehicles past the gate."

Of course they didn't. I'd forgotten about my father's paranoid security measures. The main house was still a good half-mile down the private road-a deliberate isolation tactic that had always made me feel like a prisoner rather than a princess.

I paid the driver, my cheeks burning with humiliation. Here I was, the heiress to a billion-dollar empire, standing at the gates like a beggar because I didn't even have my own car anymore. Dustin had made sure of that.

My phone buzzed as the taxi disappeared into the night, which I wasn't surprised about, because I knew my father would be able to see me standing there, or some it his men had reported to him.

"Dad. I'm at the estate gate," I said the moment I answered.

"Yeah, I know. Your brother would have come to get you," his voice was measured, careful, "but he won't be home until later tonight. I'll send someone."

Your brother. The words hit me like acid. That woman's son. The stranger who'd slithered into my father's life along with his manipulative mother, stealing the place that should have been mine. I'd never even met him-had refused to, actually. I'd left home the moment Dad announced his engagement to that gold-digging widow, taking her precious boy under his wing like he was blood.

The boy who was now a man, running my family's empire, so I heard, while I'd been playing house with a cheating bastard.

"Fine," I managed, ending the call before he could say more.

Minutes later, a sleek black car approached. The driver who stepped out was unfamiliar-of course he was. Ten years changes everything.

"Lady Velmera," he said with practiced deference. "The Chairman asked me to bring you home."

Home. The word felt foreign on my tongue as I slid into the backseat. This wasn't home anymore. Home was supposed to be the mansion I'd just been thrown out of. But that had been built on lies too, hadn't it?

As we drove down the familiar tree-lined road, memories crashed over me. My mother's laughter echoing through these same grounds. The fights with Dad after she died. The night I'd packed my bags, screaming that I'd rather live on the streets than watch him replace her with some opportunistic widow and her spoiled son.

"Get out of my house and never come back," he'd shouted.

And I had. For ten years, I'd stayed away, building a life that was supposed to prove I didn't need the Velmera name.

What a spectacular failure that had been.

The mansion loomed ahead, every window blazing with light. Somewhere inside, that woman-my father's wife-was probably preparing for my return with barely concealed glee. The prodigal daughter, crawling back defeated. And her precious son, the golden boy who'd inherited everything that should have been mine.

I squared my shoulders as the car stopped. I was coming home, but not as the daughter who'd left. I was coming home as something else entirely.

Something dangerous.

Dustin and Paige had made their first mistake when they underestimated me.

It would be their last.