Page 96 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless

I watch the city below, the ant-like figures moving through morning routines. None aware of the power wielded seventy stories above them. The decisions being made that will reshape lives. End careers. Destroy what took years to build.

This is who I am. This is what I do.

And for the first time in four years, I'm not apologizing for it.

Not even to myself.

SEVENTEEN

BEAUTIFUL DESTRUCTION

CHANEL

Four days without him, and my skin still carries the memory of his hands like a brand I can't scrub clean.

I lie awake as dawn bleeds through the blinds, painting tiger stripes across rumpled sheets I've barely slept in. My body remembers him—the weight, the heat, the pressure of fingers that once mapped every inch of me. The mind can lie. The body never does.

Sleep comes in fragments, broken by dreams where he's still inside me, still whispering against my neck, still tearing truth from places I spent years armoring. I wake gasping, hand pressed between my thighs, the phantom echo of pleasure twisted with something darker. Something that tastes like loss.

I never stopped loving you.

His confession carved into me like initials in bark—permanent, unavoidable, changing the shape of what it marked.

I don't think I ever stopped, either.

My answer—ripped from somewhere so honest it horrified me. A truth I buried beneath four years of carefulreconstruction. A truth that threatens everything I've built in his absence.

I push myself upright, the sheet falling away from skin still hypersensitive, still yearning for contact I've denied it. Four days of silence. Four nights of phones turned face-down. Four years of pretending I was better alone than devastated together.

My reflection in the bathroom mirror is a woman coming undone—eyes too bright, mouth tender from kisses that bruised more than lips, hair a dark halo of tangles from hands that gripped too tight. I lean closer, searching for evidence of the careful, controlled woman I've perfected since the divorce. She's gone. This stranger with hunger in her eyes has replaced her.

Water scalds my shoulders, my back, my chest. I twist the knob hotter, wanting pain to replace the lingering imprint of him. Steam clouds around me, dense as memories I can't wash away. My hand braces against tile, legs suddenly unsteady as my mind replays his mouth on my skin, his whispered confessions, his body moving inside mine like coming home.

Love was never our problem. Love we had in excess—violent, consuming, terrifying in its completeness. What we lacked was the courage to survive it.

No.What he lacked was trust in me as an equal. The thought hardens me, steadies my legs. Jakob made unilateral decisions about our lives—about my life—without giving me the choice. Protection without partnership isn't love. It's control wrapped in care's clothing.

"Mom?" Jaden's voice carries from the kitchen, breaking through my spiral. "I made coffee!"

My heart contracts, then expands. No matter how broken I feel, this—this love, this child, this unexpected joy—remains. Steady. Certain. Mine.

"Coming, baby," I call back, injecting warmth I don't feel into my voice.

I dress for battle—black pencil skirt, emerald silk blouse, pointed heels that click like weapons against hardwood. Armor disguised as clothing. A costume of competence for a woman whose foundation has cracked twice beneath the same man's hands.

In the kitchen, Jaden stands beside the coffee maker, measuring cream with the precise focus he inherited from his father. For a moment, Jakob is so present in the tilt of our son's chin, the careful intensity of his movements, that my chest physically aches with the echo of absence.

"Are you taking me to school today? Or is Dad coming?"

The question lands like a blow to unprotected flesh. Four days since I've spoken his name. Four days of silence where co-parenting schedules once provided structure.

"I'll take you," I say, sipping coffee to hide the tremble in my fingers. "Dad has... meetings."

The lie tastes metallic. Necessary. What I won't say:I fled his bed without explanation. I ran from truth I requested then couldn't bear to hear. I'm terrified of what happens when we're alone again.

Jaden accepts this with the resigned adaptability of children who learn early that adults are unreliable. The knowledge cuts deeper than any confession Jakob offered. Our son has grown accustomed to the wreckage we've made of family.

"Can we stop for bagels?"