Chapter 2

Memory sliced through the camouflage like a razor blade—

Three years ago, the Hawke Group launched a hostile takeover of my father’s company. It wasn't normal business competition; it was a carefully orchestrated massacre: falsified accounts, bribed executives, media manipulation, and paid-off officials. When my father collapsed on the boardroom floor from a heart attack, Damian Hawke was on a television interview, smiling as he said, "Survival of the fittest. That is the law of the market."

My mother sold every piece of jewelry she owned just to cover the funeral costs. The day we moved out of our ancestral home, the rain poured down in sheets. I stood across the street, watching the Hawke Group logo projected onto the exterior of the building that had once belonged to my family, like a scar of victory.

I decided then to mold myself into the very thing Damian coveted most.

I studied everything about Damian Hawke: his preferences, habits, weaknesses, and business methods. I learned how to feign frailty, how to make him lower his guard. I appeared at the charity galas he frequented, dressed in simple skirts, communicating through sign language, my eyes as pure as if the world had never harmed me.

He took the bait. A beautiful woman who couldn't speak, couldn't argue, and couldn't leak secrets was simply too safe for him to resist.

"You used me." There was an emotion in Damian’s voice I had never heard before—not anger, but something like... the disbelief of betrayal. This situation had exceeded his control, and he loathed the sensation.

"The feeling is mutual." I took a step back, pulling a USB drive from the lining of my handbag and dangling it before his eyes. "By the way, thank you for your tutelage over the past year... I was a very attentive student."

His complexion changed completely.

"Stop her!" he roared to the bodyguards.

But it was too late. I had already bribed the security captain on duty tonight—using Damian’s own money. The elevator doors opened, and I stepped inside, turning to face him.

"Goodbye, Damian," I said. "Or perhaps, goodbye forever."

As the elevator doors slid shut, I saw the expression of "losing control" appear on his face for the very first time.

That night, I vanished. I took five million dollars and a secret he hadn't yet discovered—the six-week-old twins growing in my womb.