My name is Nash Calloway. I didn’t inherit a fortune. I didn’t grow up in a mansion. I built myself from nothing, and I built myself into everything. Today, I own Calloway Dominion, a multinational empire in private security and cutting-edge tech. We design weapons and systems governments swear don’t exist. We control contracts worth billions. Politicians shake my hand with smiles they don’t mean, and CEOs crawl to my office just to beg for a signature. I am feared. Respected. Envied.

But no one remembers where I came from. That’s the way I wanted it.

I was an orphan. A delivery boy in a rotting pizza diner in a nameless town. My hands blistered from carrying boxes; my stomach stayed empty more often than not. I worked until my bones ached, and every night I swore I’d escape that suffocating town. I wanted more. Power. Wealth. The kind of life no one could take from me.

And then there was her.

She wasn’t supposed to matter. She was a waitress at the same diner, walking around with tired feet and a smile that didn’t belong in a place so gray. She was soft, selfless, far too good for a world like this. When she noticed I skipped meals to save what little money I had, she started saving pizza for me in the back. A kindness so small, yet it tore through me. I didn’t mean to fall. But I did. Hard.

When my chance came, when New York opened its doors like a city of steel and fire, I begged her to come with me. I confessed everything—my feelings, my hunger, my plans. I was ready to take her out of that dead-end life. But she stayed. She couldn’t leave her family, her world, her roots. So I walked out of that town alone, swearing I’d never look back.

That was years ago. Years of clawing my way up. Years of blood, sweat, and enemies buried under contracts and silence. I thought I buried her, too. But fate has a twisted sense of humor.

Because I came back. And she’s still here.

Only now, she’s different.

She has a daughter—two years old. And she’s seven months pregnant, carrying another child, her body heavy under the weight of survival. Her ex-boyfriend—an abusive bastard—left scars that aren’t just on her skin. She left him, but he left damage behind. She’s back in that same diner, still working tables, still scraping by.

The sight of her splits me open in a way nothing else ever has.

I watch her from across the street. She’s balancing grocery bags in one arm, her little girl dead asleep in the other, her swollen belly straining against her shirt. She looks exhausted, but still, she moves forward. She doesn’t see me at first. She doesn’t know I’ve been standing there, fists clenched, heart pounding in a way I haven’t felt in years.

And for the first time in decades, I don’t feel like Adam Wolff, billionaire, empire-builder, king of men. I feel like the boy in the diner who wanted to protect her.

I cross the street.

Her steps falter when she notices me. She freezes, like a deer caught in headlights, her lips parting as her eyes lock on mine. Recognition hits instantly. She knows me. Even after all this time, she knows me.

The air between us thickens. She doesn’t speak. Neither do I. I can’t. My jaw is locked, my chest feels heavy, and every muscle in me fights the urge to just take everything out of her hands, scoop her up, and never let her go.

Instead, I stop in front of her, close enough to see the lines of exhaustion carved into her face. My voice comes out low, clipped, dangerous.

“You’re not going back to that apartment. Not with her. Not like this. Pack what you need. You’re coming with me.”

I don’t give her the chance to argue. Not when I’ve already decided.