Page 91 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless

I watch the first light of dawn break over Manhattan from my office window, seventy stories above a city still sleeping.

I haven't slept.

Haven't tried.

The taste of Chanel still lingers on my tongue, the scent of her skin embedded in mine. I press my palm against the glass, cold and unyielding against my flesh.

Four hours since I left her bed. Three hours since I made the calls. Two hours since I decided.

My reflection stares back at me—a ghost trapped between worlds. The man I've pretended to be. The man I actually am.

Behind me, the door opens without a knock. Only one person would dare.

"Rough night?" Tyson asks, setting two cups of black coffee on my desk. He looks at my unchanged clothes, the shadows beneath my eyes. Not asking the question he wants to ask.

"I've made a decision." I turn from the window, accepting the coffee but not drinking it. Just feeling the burn against my palm. "Megan dies today."

His eyebrow raises a fraction—not at the words themselves, but at the tone. He's known me twenty years. Knows the difference between metaphor and intent.

"Professionally," he clarifies, watching me carefully.

"Completely." I set the coffee down, untouched. Move to my desk with the fluid precision of a man who's finished calculating. "I want everything. Her reputation. Her business. Her future. I want it dismantled so thoroughly they'll use her as a case study at Wharton."

Tyson sits, not taking his eyes off me. Measuring something. Testing the air between us like checking for gas leaks.

"You've considered scorched earth before," he says, voice neutral. "You've always decided against it."

"I've always been wrong."

He waits, giving me space to fill. I don't. The silence stretches between us until he breaks it. "What changed?"

I look at him directly for the first time, letting him see what's shifted. The walls that have fallen. The decision made.

"Four years ago, I surrendered to her threats. Walked away from my marriage to protect Chanel from the fallout. Sacrificed everything that mattered for what I thought was right." My voice drops lower—something lethal slipping into it. "Last night I finally understood the cost of that choice."

His expression doesn't change, but I see recognition in his eyes. He's been waiting for this version of me. Has seen glimpses of it in boardrooms, in negotiations, in moments when my control slips and something darker shows through.

"It wasn't just the years," I continue, each word precise. "It was the lie. Pretending to be the kind of man who deserved her. Playing at worthiness."

"And now?"

"Now I'm done pretending." I meet his gaze directly. "I am what I am."

I unlock my desk drawer, remove a slim black file. Inside, everything my security team has gathered on Megan in the past eight hours—bank records, business connections, client lists, family history, psychological profile. The collected evidence of a life about to implode.

"I want to start with her investors," I say, laying out documents with surgical precision. "The Whitman Group is looking for an exit strategy from her fund. They just don't know it yet."

Tyson doesn't reach for the papers. Just watches me with the careful attention of someone tracking a predator's movements.

"You pull that thread, and Ardano Holdings unravels within a week," he says. "The SEC will be all over her books."

"That's the point." I pull out my phone, check the time. "Chen at Blackstone takes my call in an hour. The instant he pulls funding, Wilkes follows. Domino effect."

"And then?"

"Then we create the evidence of her negligence." I tap another folder. "Our team has already mapped her security architecture. We know every vulnerability, every backdoor."

"You're going to breach her systems." Not a question.