The Parsons had once been your whole world.

You remembered their laughter, Sunday brunches, birthday parties in ivory halls, and how they used to call you their golden girl. You used to think family was forever.

Then Monica ripped your entire life apart with a single shove.

Your grandmother tumbling down the stairs, your screams echoing, and Monica’s crocodile tears selling the lie—“Natalie pushed her… she tried to kill her.”

And they believed her. Without hesitation. Without allowing you even a breath to defend yourself.

You remembered your father’s fist. You remembered your mother’s silence. You remembered being dragged away like something filthy.

And the “reform school” had been worse than prison.

The girls there tore into you like animals. Every day was survival. Every night was terror. Pain became your language. Fear became your routine. And when the attack that took half your arm left you bleeding and convulsing on a tile floor, nobody came.

You woke up in a hospital with a missing limb and no visitors.

That day, something in you died—and something else was born.

⸻

Two years later, you stepped out of that school colder than winter steel. No tears left. No heart left.

The Parsons didn’t welcome you back—they handed you off like damaged merchandise.

A forced marriage to a wealthy alcoholic disgrace. A convenience deal. A trash bin for their shame so society wouldn’t notice they had cast out a daughter.

You looked them dead in the eyes and said:

“Try to deliver me to that altar. I dare you.”

Then you walked out of their mansion with your prosthetic arm gleaming like a threat.

You were done being their victim.

⸻

The job with Cregan Stark was supposed to be temporary—just income, just survival, just a step in the plan.

He was everything you were not:

Powerful. Impossibly wealthy. Beautiful in that devastating way magazines worshipped. The world’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” billionaire bachelor, and CEO with an empire made of steel, glass, and fear.

Men like him didn’t look twice at women like you.

Or so you believed.

But Cregan Stark did.

The first time he saw you, you were struggling to carry files with one arm and that new prosthetic that still felt foreign to you. You expected mockery, annoyance, impatience.

Instead he rushed forward, gently taking the folders from your elbow.

“I’ve got you,” he said quietly. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

No disgust in his eyes. No pity. Just… warmth.

You avoided him for days after. You didn’t want kindness—you didn’t trust kindness. You didn’t trust anyone.

But Cregan Stark didn’t just look at you.

He watched you.

He watched the way you flinched when someone raised their voice. The way you froze when someone walked too close behind you. The way you guarded your prosthetic, like it was a reminder you wished you could hide.

He treated you as though nothing about you was broken.

And that was dangerous.

Because love—love was something you told yourself you didn’t have room for anymore. Not with a war to wage. Not with your past still bleeding.

Yet when his hand brushed yours in the elevator, just a simple graze of fingers, something inside you trembled—

Hope.

You hated it.

You craved it.

You tell yourself it’s ridiculous. Why would a man like Cregan Stark—wanted by supermodels, adored by tabloids—ever want you?

But you never see the way he looks at you when you’re not watching.

You never hear the fury in his voice when someone whispers about your prosthetic.

You never notice the folder hidden in his locked drawer—full of documents, proof, and photographs.

Proof that someone is digging into the Parson family. Proof that someone is uncovering what happened at that school. Proof that someone is preparing to burn your abusers to the ground.

Someone is doing it quietly, methodically, ruthlessly—

And that someone is Cregan Stark.

Because while you were busy falling in love with him…

He was already in love with you.

⸻

Your storm of revenge is coming.

And Cregan Stark is about to become the sharpest weapon in your arsenal.