Pampered By The Enemy Of My Ex

I served the Dunlap family for six years, managing their dark accounts and raising children that weren't mine, all while waiting for my husband to truly love me.

But when the "real" mistress returned, my devotion was rewarded with a death sentence. My husband, Gavyn, didn't just ask for a divorce; he dragged me to a cliff edge.

He stood next to Iliana, the woman who stole my life, and looked at me with cold indifference. He called me a thief. He called me an "incubator"-a temporary vessel used to hold his place until his princess came back.

Then, he ordered his hitman to finish it.

I managed to bribe the hitman and jumped into the freezing ocean, but the fall cost me the only thing that mattered. Alone on a desolate beach, shivering and broken, I miscarried Gavyn's child-the baby he didn't even know existed.

I lay in the sand, hollowed out by grief. I couldn't understand how the man I worshipped could discard me like trash. He didn't just break my heart; he tried to erase my existence.

But fate wasn't done with me.

On that same beach, I found a wounded young man hiding in the woods. He wasn't just a stranger; he was the lost heir to the Sosa crime family-Gavyn's mortal enemies.

When the Don, Daniel Sosa, came to claim his nephew, he offered me a hand.

Now, the world thinks Alex Dunlap is dead.

But tonight, I am walking into the Grand Gala on the arm of the most dangerous man in the city.

And I'm going to burn Gavyn's empire to the ground.

Chapter 1

Alex POV

The biting wind whipping across the tarmac didn't sting as hard as the freezing realization settling in my gut: I was about to die.

Rough hands dragged me down the metal steps of the private jet. My knees slammed into the gravel, scraping skin raw through my torn stockings.

The roar of the jet engines died down, leaving only the howling mountain wind and the ragged sound of my own breathing.

Rico loomed over me.

He was a mountain of a man, Iliana's personal cleaner-the kind of professional who didn't lose sleep over bloodstains. He checked the magazine of his pistol with a detached boredom that terrified me more than blind rage ever could.

"Get up," he said, his voice flat and devoid of humanity. "Iliana wants this done clean. No mess. No body found."

I stared at the cliff edge, barely ten yards away. Below it, the ocean churned violently against jagged rocks. It was a long way down.

I forced myself to stand. My legs shook, not just from terror, but from the sheer, crushing exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours.

My husband had discarded me. My stepchildren had framed me. And now, the woman who stole my life wanted to erase my existence entirely.

Tears pricked my eyes, hot and stinging, but I swallowed them back. Crying wouldn't save me. Gavyn wasn't here to play the hero. I was alone.

"Wait," I choked out. My voice cracked, but I forced the words through my dry throat.

Rico raised the gun, leveling it at my chest. "Don't make this hard, Mrs. Dunlap. Or... ex-Mrs. Dunlap."

"Money," I blurted out.

Rico paused. The barrel of the gun lowered-just a fraction of an inch.

"I have money," I said, the words tumbling out faster now. "More than Iliana is paying you. Much more."

He scoffed, a harsh sound in the wind. "Iliana is a princess. Her pockets are deep."

"She is a figurehead," I countered, stepping closer despite the weapon pointed at my heart. "I managed the Dunlap household accounts for six years. I know where the bodies are buried, and I know where the money is hidden. But more importantly, I have my own."

I reached into my pocket with trembling fingers. Rico flinched, his finger tightening reflexively on the trigger.

"Slowly," he warned.

I pulled out the encrypted phone I had hidden earlier. I tapped the screen, bringing up the offshore account I had set up the moment I suspected Gavyn was lying to me. I turned the screen toward him.

The cold blue light illuminated his face, reflecting in his widening eyes. The number on the screen was seven figures long.

"Iliana gives you a salary," I said, my voice gaining a desperate strength. "I am giving you freedom."

Rico looked at the phone, then back at me. He licked his lips, calculating.

"If I let you go, Iliana will skin me alive."

"She won't know," I pressed. "You tell her I'm dead. You tell her I fell. You take the money and you disappear. Or... you kill me, take her scraps, and stay a servant for the rest of your life."

The wind whipped my hair across my face, blinding me for a second. I held my breath. This was it. The only leverage I had left in a world that had stripped me of everything else.

Rico lowered the gun completely.

"Transfer it," he growled. "Now."

My fingers flew across the screen. I authorized the transfer. The ping of confirmation sounded like a gunshot in the quiet air.

Rico checked his own phone. A slow, dark smile spread across his face.

"You're smarter than you look, Alex."

Before I could exhale, the thumping rhythm of helicopter blades sliced through the air, drowning out the wind.

Rico's head snapped up. He cursed under his breath.

"It's Gavyn," he shouted over the rising noise.

My heart stopped. Gavyn.

He came for me.

A tiny, pathetic spark of hope flared in my chest. Maybe he found out the truth. Maybe he came to save me.

The helicopter descended, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust and gravel. It landed heavily a few yards away, and the door slid open.

Gavyn stepped out.

He looked impeccable in his charcoal suit, his face a mask of cold fury.

But then, a second figure emerged.

Iliana.

She clung to his arm, her face twisted in a triumphant smirk. She whispered something in his ear, gesturing sharply at me and Rico.

My hope died a violent death.

Gavyn marched toward us. He didn't look at me with love. He didn't look at me with relief. He looked at me like I was a stain on his perfect reputation-something to be scrubbed away.

Rico stepped back, instantly playing the part. "I caught her trying to run, Boss."

Gavyn stopped in front of me. His gaze raked over my torn dress, my bleeding knees, with zero empathy.

"Is it true?" he asked. His voice was ice. "Did you try to steal the family jewels? Did you hurt the children?"

I stared at him, paralyzed.

Six years. Six years of devotion. And he believed the lies of a woman who had been gone for all of them.

"I didn't steal anything," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I loved them. I loved you."

Iliana stepped up beside him. She placed a possessive hand on his chest, her nails digging into the expensive fabric of his suit.

"She's lying, darling," she purred, her voice dripping with poison. "Look at her. She's desperate. She knows she's just a placeholder. An incubator."

The word hit me like a physical blow.

Incubator.

Gavyn didn't deny it. He didn't even flinch.

He looked at me, and for a second, I saw a flicker of something in his eyes. Guilt? Regret?

It didn't matter. Because then he looked at Iliana. He looked at her royal blood, her connection to power, her ability to give him the legitimacy he craved.

"Finish it," Gavyn said.

He turned his back on me.

I couldn't breathe. The betrayal was absolute. It wasn't just a lack of love; it was an active disposal. I was garbage to be taken out.

Rico raised his gun again. He looked at me, and I saw the slightest, almost imperceptible nod. A signal.

"Jump," he mouthed silently.

He fired into the air.

The sound was deafening.

I didn't think. I turned and sprinted toward the cliff edge.

Behind me, I heard Iliana scream in delight.

I threw myself into the void.

The wind rushed past my ears, screaming like a banshee. The dark water rushed up to meet me.

I hit the surface with a bone-shattering impact, and then the cold swallowed me whole.

Alex POV

Pain was the only tether holding me to the living.

It crashed over me in waves, syncing with the violent rhythm of the ocean that tossed me back and forth like flotsam. Saltwater burned my throat, my nose, my eyes. My limbs felt like lead, dragging me down into the suffocating dark depths.

I kicked, fueled purely by a primal instinct to breathe.

My fingers scraped against something solid. Sand.

I clawed my way forward. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how long I had been drifting in the inflatable raft Rico had stashed at the base of the cliff. The raft was gone now, shredded by the jagged rocks or lost to the merciless current.

I dragged my broken body onto the shore. The sand was coarse and biting against my cheek. I coughed, retching up seawater until my stomach cramped violently.

But the cramp didn't stop.

It twisted deep in my abdomen, a sharp, tearing agony that had nothing to do with the ocean.

I curled into a tight ball, clutching my stomach as a low, guttural moan escaped my lips.

"Please, no."

The plea died in my raw throat. A memory surfaced through the agony-the doctor's words. Two months pregnant.

The pain intensified, a hot knife carving me open from the inside out. I felt a warm, sickening wetness between my legs that I knew wasn't seawater.

I tried to sit up, to stop it, to do something. But my body was broken. I was shivering uncontrollably, my teeth chattering so hard I thought they would crack under the pressure.

Gavyn's face flashed behind my eyelids. The cold indifference in his eyes. The way he had turned his back on me.

"He killed us," I whispered to the empty, desolate beach.

The physical agony bled into the emotional devastation. I was losing the last piece of me that mattered. The only thing I had taken from that house that was truly mine.

I lay there for hours as the sun began to rise, baking my salt-crusted skin. The heat did nothing to warm the ice in my veins.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, suspended in a grey haze.

In the delirium of fever, I saw him.

Gavyn stood over me on the beach, his shoes polished and spotless amidst the grit and sand.

"Get up, Alex," he sneered, his lip curling in disgust. "You're making a scene."

I reached out a trembling hand. "Help me. Please. It hurts."

He laughed, and the sound was cruel, hollow-a void where a heart should be. "You served your purpose. Why are you still here?"

He turned and walked away, fading into the blinding white glare of the sun.

I screamed his name, but no sound tore free. My throat was too raw to speak.

Slowly, the pain in my belly subsided into a dull, hollow ache. I knew, with a mother's terrible, ancient instinct, that it was over. The life inside me had flickered out.

I was empty.

Then, a shadow fell over me.

My vision was blurry, swimming with heat and tears. I tried to focus. A figure was walking toward me from the tree line.

Not Gavyn.

This figure was rougher, the edges less refined, less polished.

I tried to crawl away, my survival instinct kicking in one last time. But my arms gave out, useless beneath me. I collapsed face-first into the sand.

The darkness rushed in from the edges of my vision, claiming me.

I welcomed it.

If this was death, it was kinder than Gavyn Dunlap had ever been.

Alex POV

The sharp tang of woodsmoke and dried herbs dragged me back to consciousness.

I wasn't dead. If this were hell, it wouldn't smell this earthy-it would smell of sulfur and regret.

I opened my eyes. Above me, wooden beams stretched across the ceiling, dark with age and soot. I was lying on a narrow cot, covered in a rough wool blanket that smelled of dust.

I tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness slammed into me, pushing me back down against the mattress.

"Easy," a voice said.

I turned my head, fighting the blur in my vision. A young man sat in a chair near a small, crackling fireplace. He looked to be in his early twenties, with dark, messy hair and eyes that seemed far too old for his face. A thick bandage was wrapped around his head, stained slightly with dried blood.

"Who are you?" I rasped. My voice sounded like shredded sandpaper.

"Aaron," he said, his tone hesitant. "I found you on the beach. You were... bad."

I looked down at myself. I was wearing an oversized flannel shirt that wasn't mine, the fabric swallowing my frame.

Then, the memories crashed into me. The cliff. The ocean. The searing pain in my stomach.

My hand flew to my abdomen. The swell was gone. It felt flat. Hollow.

Aaron looked away, staring into the fire as if the flames held the answers. "There was blood," he said softly. "A lot of it. I did what I could, but..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.

A sob ripped through my chest, tearing at my throat. It was a raw, ugly sound. I curled onto my side, burying my face in the scratchy pillow to muffle the scream building inside me. I mourned the child I never got to hold. I mourned the woman I used to be.

Aaron didn't try to comfort me with empty words. He just sat there, a silent witness to my ruin.

Days passed in a gray blur. I learned that we were in a derelict hunting cabin, miles from the nearest town. Aaron had been hiking when he fell and hit his head. He remembered his first name, but nothing else. No last name. No family. No home.

We were two ghosts haunting a shack in the middle of nowhere.

My strength returned slowly, inch by painful inch. But as my body healed, my heart hardened. I stopped crying for Gavyn. I stopped crying for the baby. Tears were a luxury I couldn't afford.

I watched Aaron move around the small space. He was clumsy with his hands, often staring blankly at the walls as if trying to read invisible writing. He was vulnerable. Like a lost puppy.

One evening, a storm rattled the thin windows of the cabin, the wind howling like a dying animal. Aaron huddled in the corner, covering his ears, shaking violently.

I went to him. I sat beside him and wrapped the blanket around his trembling shoulders.

"It's okay," I whispered, my voice gaining a steadiness I didn't feel. "It's just noise."

He looked at me with wide, terrified eyes. "I don't know who I am," he said, his voice trembling. "I don't have anyone."

"You have me," I said. The words came out before I thought them through, but as soon as they hung in the air, I knew they were true.

I looked at this broken boy, and I felt a fierce, protective heat rise in my chest. Gavyn had treated me like a tool. Iliana had treated me like an obstacle.

I wouldn't be a victim anymore. And I wouldn't let this boy be one either.

"We need to leave," I told him the next morning, the sun barely cresting the horizon.

"Where?" he asked, blinking in confusion.

"Anywhere but here," I said. "I have money stashed away in accounts they don't know about. We can start over. I'll be your sister. I'll take care of you."

He nodded, trusting me blindly.

We packed what little we had. I found an old, rusted knife in the kitchen drawer and tucked it into my boot.

As we walked out of the forest and onto the main road, leaving the ocean and my past behind, I felt a shift in the universe.

Alex Dunlap died on that beach.

The woman walking down this road was someone else entirely. And she was ready to burn the world down if she had to.