Page 40 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless (The Rules We Break #1)

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 careful reconstruction. 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?"

"Of course."

I drop a kiss on his forehead, inhaling the clean scent of him—this miracle we created before we destroyed everything else.

No matter what breaks between Jakob and me, this remains whole.

This perfect creature who carries pieces of us both, who deserves better than parents orbiting each other without connecting.

Breakfast. School drop-off. Remote work. The agenda ticks through my mind with desperate precision. If I focus on the next task, then the next, I won't have to confront the hollow space behind my ribs where something vital seems to have gone missing.

* * *

The apartment echoes with absence after Jaden leaves.

Every surface a reminder of what's been lost—twice now.

The silence carries weight, pressing against my skin like an accusation.

I've become expert at living alone, at filling spaces with curated independence.

Why does it suddenly feel like drowning?

I arrange my makeshift workspace at the dining table—laptop, files, coffee gone cold—the trappings of a woman professionally exiled.

The email from RSV arrives in pristine corporate language that barely disguises the execution: work remotely until the White Glove Pivot concludes.

Sanitized termination. Career death with benefits.

The numbers blur before me, columns of data that once made perfect sense now swimming like abstract art. I rebuilt my career from the rubble Jakob left behind, only to watch it collapse again under the weight of his name. The bitter symmetry isn't lost on me.

My fingers touch the audit documentation—the weeks of work that brought us back into collision.

Something about these pages feels different.

Not the content, but the collaboration that created them.

This isn't the work of the man who left me.

This carries the mark of someone new—or someone I never fully saw.

The memory surfaces without permission: Jakob in the boardroom with RSV, my career hanging by a thread.

He didn't rush to my defense, didn't speak over me, didn't shield me from accusations.

He stood silent, watchful, letting me fight my own battle.

Only when I'd finished, when I'd stood my ground with the strength I built in his absence, did he step forward. Not to diminish me. To amplify me.

Not the Jakob I married. Not the man who thought protection meant making choices on my behalf.

A knock at my door fractures the thought.

For one wild, weightless moment, I think it's him—come to continue what began in the penthouse, what shattered in my bedroom. My pulse leaps beneath my skin, a traitor to my resolve.

When I open the door, Latanya stands in the hallway—elegant in the casual clothes she wears for her kindergarten class, carrying a bag that smells like overpriced comfort food, wearing the smile of someone who sees too much.

"I took a half day," she explains, stepping into my space with the easy entitlement of long friendship. "Someone told me you were working from home this week."

Someone . Of course. Manhattan runs on rumor, and Latanya has always had an uncanny talent for collecting information others want hidden.

"The White Glove is consuming everything right now," I say, accepting the bag with a nod that doesn't acknowledge the professional catastrophe we're both pretending not to discuss.

"And here I thought Jakob Giannetti was consuming everything." Her voice carries a knife's edge beneath the concern.

My fingers tighten around the counter, a tell I can't control. Latanya's gaze tracks the movement, something sharp flashing behind her friendly assessment—there, then gone, like a shark passing beneath dark water.

"The audit is consuming everything," I correct, voice steady while my body betrays me. "Jakob is... irrelevant."

"Is he, though?" She moves through my kitchen with the familiarity of a woman who has seen me at my worst, extracting containers, locating plates, invading the space I've fought to make my own.

"You've been avoiding my calls for days.

Not answering texts. And suddenly you're back to being the work-obsessed Chanel who doesn't eat or sleep. "

I force myself to sit, to take a bite of whatever Mediterranean fusion she's brought. Food turns to ash in my mouth.

"It's been a complicated week."

"Complicated," she repeats, testing the word's inadequacy. "That's a delicate way of describing whatever happened between you two. Last I checked, you were playing happy family at the aquarium. Now you're professionally exiled and looking like someone cut out your organs while you slept."

The assessment lands with uncomfortable accuracy. Latanya has always seen too clearly—the friend who held me when the divorce papers arrived, who watched Jaden when work consumed me, who never judged my choices even when I questioned them myself.

"We're done," I say finally, the words scraping my throat raw. "Whatever was happening between us—it's over."

"What did he do?" Immediate fury darkens her eyes, protective and fierce.

"He kept things from me." The confession feels insufficient against the weight of what actually transpired. "Made decisions about our relationship, our divorce, without telling me the truth."

"So, basically, he was Jakob." Her tone sharpens. "Controlling. Secretive. Thinking he knows what's best for everyone."

I flinch. The assessment isn't wrong, but something about hearing it from her mouth makes my skin contract.

"Yes. And no. There were... complications."

"Like what?"

I hesitate. The full truth feels too intimate to share—even with her. Something sacred in its terrible beauty.

"He was trying to protect me. From Megan, from business complications. He thought leaving was the only way to keep me safe."