Page 38 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless (The Rules We Break #1)

SIXTEEN

NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

JAKOB

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.

"We already have." I meet his gaze steadily. "The intrusion happened last week. The evidence trail leads directly to her private server, where we've planted corrupted files from three of her highest-profile clients."

"That's not just business, Jakob. That's?—"

"It's what's necessary." I cut him off, voice cool. "Next week, those files appear on a dark web forum frequented by financial journalists. Anonymous source claims they came from a disgruntled employee at Ardano Holdings."

"And when the clients discover their information is compromised?"

"They'll need immediate containment and reputation management." A cold smile touches my lips. "Which is exactly what Novare Global Strategies specializes in."

"You'll position yourself as the solution to the problem you created."

"I'll position myself as the only option after her catastrophic failure is exposed." I close the folder with deliberate care. "In our world, trust is the only currency that matters. Break it once, you're finished."

Tyson's eyes narrow slightly, understanding the architecture I'm building. "That evidence doesn't exist."

"It will by noon." I don't blink. Don't hesitate. "Collins has a team working on it now."

He sits back, studying me. I see the moment he realizes I'm not asking for approval. Not seeking advice. This isn't a consultation. It's a briefing.

"You're manufacturing evidence." Not a question. Not quite an accusation. "You'll ruin the audit."

"I'm creating truth." I close the file again, deliberately. "The same way she did when she threatened Chanel four years ago. The same way she's doing now with the fabricated emails."

I meet Tyson's eyes, letting him see something I've kept leashed for years. Something cold. Something final.

"She started this game. I'm ending it. And when I'm done, she'll serve as a warning to anyone else who thinks they can touch what's mine."

"Because you're better at it."

"Because I have more to lose."

The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. The truth is simpler, darker : I have nothing left to lose.

After last night, the way Chanel looked at me when we finished, that careful distance in her eyes even as her body still trembled against mine—I know. Some bridges can't be rebuilt. Some trust can't be restored.

Tyson stands, moves to the window I abandoned. Looks out at the city waking beneath us. When he speaks, his voice is quieter than before.

"What happens when Chanel finds out what you've done?"

"She already knows what I'm capable of." I join him at the window, not looking at the city but at my reflection. At the man taking shape in the glass. "She's always known. I was the one pretending otherwise."

"And if she doesn't want this version of you?"

The question should hurt. Should give me pause. Should make me reconsider.

It doesn't.

"Then she was never really in love with me," I say, voice steady. "Just the man I let her see."

Tyson turns to study my face, looking for something—doubt, perhaps. Hesitation.

He won't find it.

"You understand what you're risking." Again, not a question.

"I understand what I've already lost." I move back to my desk, pulling up emails on my monitor. Starting the machinery that will dismantle Megan piece by piece. "Twice."

"And if it costs you Chanel for good?"

My hands still on the keyboard. One heartbeat. Two. Three.

"Then at least this time, it will be my choice. Not Megan's. Not fear's." I resume typing, each keystroke deliberate. "Not the lie I told myself about who deserves who."

He watches me for a long moment before nodding once, decision made. We've worked together long enough that I recognize his surrender to inevitability. His acceptance that this isn't something he can talk me out of. That he shouldn't try.

"Where do we start?" he asks, moving to sit across from me.

"We start by understanding what Megan wants." I pull up her file on the screen, turning it so we both can see. "Not just professionally. Personally. What drives her."

"Power."

"No." I shake my head. "That's too simple. Too clean. Megan doesn't want power as an end. She wants acknowledgment. Validation. She wants to matter to people who've dismissed her."

"Like you."

"Especially me." I lean back, the leather chair creaking beneath my weight. "She's not after Novare. She's not even after Chanel, not really. She's after the recognition that she matters enough to destroy what matters to me."

Tyson absorbs this, connecting dots in the careful, methodical way that's made him invaluable to me for two decades.

"So we don't just dismantle her business," he says slowly. "We dismantle her sense of significance."

"Exactly." Something cold and precise settles in my chest. A plan crystallizing. "We don't just take away what she has. We take away what she believes about herself."

"That's more than professional execution, Jakob. That's?—"

"What she deserves." I cut him off, voice final. "What she's earned."

The silence that follows feels weighted, significant. Tyson studies me with the careful attention of someone reassessing a familiar landscape after an earthquake.

"I've never seen you like this," he says finally.

"You've never seen me," I correct him. "Not really. I've spent my life making sure of it."

I stand, move to the bar cart in the corner of my office. Pour two fingers of scotch despite the early hour. Offer him nothing. This isn't a celebration. This is fuel.

"When I married Chanel, I tried to be worthy of her." The scotch burns down my throat—a cleansing fire. "I thought that meant being better. Being more than what I was raised to be. More than what I knew myself capable of."

I set the glass down with careful precision.

"I was wrong. It wasn't about being worthy. It was about being honest." I turn to face him fully. "I've spent four years pretending to be the man who deserved to lose her. Playing the role of the honorable exile."

"And now?"

"Now I stop pretending that I'm anything other than what I am."

I return to my desk, pulling up another file. Another piece of the architecture of Megan's destruction. "A man who will do whatever is necessary to protect what's mine."

"Even if what's yours doesn't want to be protected."