He thought he left me to die in a fire. He was wrong. Now, with a new face, I'm back to burn his empire to the ground.
Chapter 1
Emerson Keller POV:
The tenth time you lose a child, the grief is different. It' s not a sharp, sudden shatter. It' s a dull, grinding erosion of the soul, a familiar ache that settles deep in your bones, whispering a truth you' ve been trying to deny for five years: you are broken.
I stared at the pristine white ceiling of the hospital room, the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor a flat, monotonous soundtrack to my emptiness. The air smelled of antiseptic and lilies-the ones my husband, Barron, had insisted on bringing. He always brought lilies.
He was a master of details, my Barron.
When he first appeared in my life, it was like a scene from a movie. My world had imploded. Keller Pharmaceuticals, my family' s legacy for three generations, had been gutted by a hostile takeover, a brutal corporate raid orchestrated with surgical precision. The shame and despair were too much for my parents. They chose to leave the world together, a final, tragic act of unity, leaving me an orphan adrift in the wreckage of our name.
And then there was Barron Carroll. The architect of my family's ruin.
He came to me not as a conqueror, but as a savior. He confessed his admiration for my father, spun a tale of wanting to preserve the company' s integrity, of being a reluctant predator forced by the market. His eyes, the color of a stormy sea, held a depth of sincerity that disarmed me. He held me as I sobbed, absorbed my rage, and then, piece by piece, he put me back together.
He handled everything. The funerals, the legalities, the vultures in the press. He became my shield. He showed me a side of himself no one in the business world ever saw-gentle, patient, utterly devoted. He had learned my favorite brand of tea, the exact temperature I liked my bath, the obscure French films that made me laugh. He knew the Keller family history better than I did, revering my grandfather' s portrait as if it were his own. He acquired my family' s prized possessions from auction houses-my mother' s favorite Monet, my father' s collection of first-edition novels-and returned them to me, framing it all as an act of penance, of love.
And I, shattered and alone, had believed him. I fell in love with the man who had destroyed my world because he had so expertly rebuilt a gilded cage around me and called it a home.
Five years of marriage. Five years of what I thought was a deep, healing love. And ten pregnancies. Ten tiny sparks of hope that flickered and died within me, always between the eighth and tenth week.
Each time, Barron was the perfect, doting husband. He held my hand through every doctor' s appointment, his brow furrowed with concern. He researched specialists, flew in experts from around the world. He comforted me through every miscarriage, his tears mingling with mine, whispering, "We' ll get through this, my love. We' ll have our family. I promise."
Now, lying in this cold, familiar bed, the tenth promise broken, a wave of exhaustion washed over me. The doctor had just left, offering gentle, useless condolences and suggesting another round of invasive tests. Barron was outside, speaking on the phone in a hushed, serious tone, probably rearranging his billion-dollar schedule to take care of his fragile wife.
A nurse came in and checked my IV drip, adding a sedative. "Mr. Carroll' s orders," she said with a sympathetic smile. "He wants you to get some rest. He worries so much about you."
My eyelids grew heavy. The edges of the room blurred. As I drifted into the medicated haze, I heard the click of the door not quite latching. It was open just a crack.
And through that crack, I heard his voice. Not the soft, caring tone he used with me, but one that was cold, clipped, and transactional.
"It' s done, Cydney. The debt is paid."
A pause. Then a woman' s voice, sharp and laced with something I couldn' t quite place-bitterness, maybe triumph. "Ten? Are you sure it was the tenth? I want to be certain, Barron. A life for a life. Ten years I lost in that hellhole because of our little venture. She needed to feel loss. Ten times."
The world stopped. The beeping of the monitor seemed to fade into a distant hum. My body was leaden, my mind a vortex of screaming silence.
"I' ve been... meticulous," Barron' s voice replied, and the word, a word I once associated with his love and care, now sounded utterly monstrous. "The special blend of herbs in her relaxation tea works every time. Subtly weakens the uterine lining. No traces, no suspicion. Just another unfortunate, tragic miscarriage."
The air left my lungs. The sedative held my body in a state of perfect, horrifying stillness, but my mind was on fire. I couldn' t move. I couldn' t scream. I could only lie there, a prisoner in my own flesh, as the foundation of my life turned to dust.
The tea.
Every night, for five years, he' d brought me a cup of special chamomile-lavender tea. "To help you relax, my love," he' d say, stroking my hair as I drank. "To create a peaceful environment for our baby to grow."
The image flashed in my mind: Barron, my loving husband, carefully steeping the leaves, his handsome face a mask of devotion, while he was methodically, patiently, poisoning my womb. Killing our children. One by one.
Ten of them.
My children.
He had never been unfaithful. That was the one thing I had been certain of, even during my darkest moments of grief. I remembered once, years ago, crying in his arms after the third loss, convinced I was being punished for some unknown sin. He had held me tight and said, "Never doubt my love, Emerson. There is no one else. There never will be. You are the only one I will ever protect."
He wasn' t protecting me. He was protecting her. Cydney Velazquez. I remembered the name from the news reports years ago, a brilliant but volatile accomplice in one of Barron' s early, ruthless corporate schemes. She had taken the fall, gone to prison, while Barron had walked away clean, his empire already beginning to rise.
This was his penance. Not to me, for ruining my family, but to her. He hadn't been paying a debt to my family' s legacy; he was paying a debt to his partner in crime. And I-my body, my hopes, my unborn children-I was the currency.
The whole beautiful, tragic love story was a lie. He hadn' t rescued me from the ashes of my life; he had been standing there the whole time with a can of gasoline and a match. My parents' suicides weren't just the collateral damage of a business deal; they were the first calculated step in his plan to acquire me, his ultimate prize. He had shattered me so he could be the one to piece me back together in his own image.
The intelligent, trusting heiress. What a fool I had been. What a blind, pathetic fool, so desperate for love that I had accepted it from my own destroyer.
The rage that began to smolder in the pit of my stomach was a cold, pure thing. It was different from the hot, messy grief I had known. This was a diamond-hard fury, forged in the ultimate betrayal. He had taken everything from me. My family. My company. My life. And ten children I would never know.
The sedative was wearing off just enough for my fingers to twitch. Slowly, painstakingly, my hand moved across the starched white sheet toward the nightstand where my phone lay. My movements were clumsy, thick with medication, but my mind was laser-focused.
There was only one person in the world who could help me now. Someone from a life before Barron. Someone who had warned me about him, in his own quiet way, long ago.
My fingers closed around the cool metal of the phone. I managed to unlock it, my thumb shaking. I opened my contacts, my vision blurry, and found the name.
Keenan Sullivan.
My childhood friend. The boy my parents had practically raised alongside me. Now a powerful, enigmatic security mogul based in Zurich. A ghost from my past. My only hope for a future.
My thumb hovered over the call button, but I typed a message instead, the words stark against the screen.
I need you.
---
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