Damien POV
Watching Isabella's face when I said those words was like watching a building collapse in slow motion, beautiful and terrible and absolutely devastating. The careful mask of corporate composure she'd worn throughout the meeting cracked completely, revealing the woman underneath. The woman who'd once looked at me like I hung the stars and promised to wait for me forever.
The woman who'd done nothing while her father destroyed my life.
"You son of a bitch," she whispered, her hands gripping the edge of the conference table so tightly her knuckles went white. "You planned this. All of it."
"Every single detail," I confirmed, leaning back in my chair with casual satisfaction. "From the moment your father had me escorted out of this building seven years ago, I've been planning this exact conversation."
She stood abruptly, the motion sharp enough to send her chair rolling backward. The afternoon light streaming through the windows caught the copper highlights in her hair, illuminated the fury blazing in those emerald eyes, and for a moment I was twenty-five again, watching her pace around my lab while she argued with me about some theoretical concept she didn't quite understand.
Focus, Cross. She's not that girl anymore. And you're sure as hell not that boy.
But God, she was magnificent when she was angry. The years had refined her beauty into something sharper, more dangerous. The soft curves of eighteen had evolved into the lethal elegance of twenty-five, long legs that went on for miles, a waist I could probably span with my hands, and breasts that the tailored jacket couldn't quite hide.
Stop. Thinking. About. Her. Body.
"Seven years," she said, starting to pace the length of the conference room like a caged lioness. "Seven years you've been planning to destroy Sterling Industries. To destroy me."
"Not you," I said quietly, though the distinction felt important even if I wasn't entirely sure why. "Your father's legacy. There's a difference."
She whirled to face me, hair whipping around her shoulders, and the movement was so sudden and graceful it made something tighten low in my gut.
"Is there? Because last I checked, I am my father's legacy. I'm the one sitting in his chair, running his company, carrying his name." Her voice cracked slightly on the last words. "If you destroy Sterling Industries, you destroy me."
The pain in her voice hit me like a physical blow, but I forced myself to remain unmoved. She'd chosen her side seven years ago when she'd stood silent while Richard Sterling stole my work and had me blacklisted from every major corporation in the country.
"Then maybe you should have thought about that before you let him steal from me," I said, my voice colder than I felt.
"Let him?" She stared at me like I'd grown a second head. "Let him? I was eighteen years old, Damien! I didn't even know what happened until I read his letter yesterday. I spent months waiting for you to call, to explain where you'd gone, why you'd disappeared without a word."
Something twisted in my chest at her words, but I pushed it down. She was lying. She had to be lying, because the alternative, that she'd been as blindsided as I was, would mean I'd spent seven years hating the wrong person.
"Convenient," I said. "Your father destroys my life, steals technology worth millions, and you just happened to be completely ignorant of the whole thing."
"It's the truth!" The words exploded out of her with such force that I almost believed them. Almost. "Do you think I would have stood by and let him do that to you? Do you think so little of what we, "
She cut herself off, but I heard the unfinished word hanging in the air between us.
What we had.
"What we had," I finished for her, standing slowly. "Was a mistake. A moment of weakness that I've regretted for seven years."
The lie tasted like ash in my mouth, but it hit its target. I watched the color drain from her face, watched her take an involuntary step backward as if I'd struck her.
"A mistake," she repeated softly.
"A rich girl slumming with the help," I continued, each word a deliberate wound. "Did you think it was more than that? Did you think someone like you could actually care about someone like me?"
Stop. You're going too far.
But I couldn't stop. Seven years of rage and pain and humiliation were pouring out of me like poison from a lanced wound, and Isabella was the only target available.
"Someone like you," she said, and her voice was deadly quiet now. "You mean someone brilliant? Someone driven? Someone who made me laugh and challenged me and looked at me like I was the most important thing in his world?"
Fuck.
The genuine pain in her voice, the way she was looking at me like I was a stranger, it was cutting through my carefully constructed armor like a hot knife through butter.
"That boy is dead," I said harshly. "Your father killed him the day he stole my designs and destroyed my company."
"No," she said, moving closer. Close enough that I could smell her perfume, something subtle and expensive that made me want to bury my face in her neck and breathe her in. "That boy is standing right in front of me, pretending to be someone else."
She was close enough now that I could see the flecks of gold in her green eyes, could count the freckles across her nose that makeup couldn't quite hide. Close enough that if I reached out, I could touch her face, could see if her skin was still as soft as I remembered.
Instead, I gripped the back of my chair hard enough to leave marks.
"You don't know me anymore, bella," I said, letting my voice drop to the register that used to make her shiver. "You don't know what I've become."
Her breath caught at the endearment, and I saw the way her pulse jumped in the hollow of her throat. Good. Let her remember what it felt like to want me. Let her remember what she'd given up.
"Then show me," she whispered, taking another step closer. "Show me what you've become."
The challenge in her voice, the way she was looking at me, like she was daring me to prove how much I'd changed, snapped the last of my control.
I moved faster than she expected, closing the distance between us in two strides and backing her against the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city. My hands bracketed her head, palms flat against the glass, trapping her between my body and the wall.
She gasped at the sudden contact, her hands flying up to press against my chest, but she didn't try to push me away. Instead, her fingers curled into the fabric of my suit jacket like she was anchoring herself.
"Is this what you want?" I asked, my voice rough with seven years of suppressed desire and rage. "You want to see what your father created?"
She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly enough that I could feel it against my own. The scent of her perfume was stronger now, mixed with something that was purely Isabella, warm and sweet and intoxicating.
"Damien," she whispered, and my name on her lips sounded like a prayer and a curse all at once.
"I've thought about this moment for seven years," I said, letting my voice drop to barely above a whisper. "About having you trapped, vulnerable, completely at my mercy."
Her eyes widened, but there was no fear in them. If anything, she looked... intrigued. Aroused, even.
Christ, she's even more dangerous than I thought.
"And what did you plan to do," she asked softly, "once you had me trapped?"
The question hung between us like a loaded gun. I could feel the heat radiating from her body, could see the way her lips had parted slightly, could practically taste the tension crackling in the air between us.
I could kiss her. Right here, right now, against the windows of her father's boardroom where anyone walking by could see. I could show her exactly what seven years of hatred and desire had done to me, could remind her body of every way I used to make her fall apart in my arms.
Instead, I stepped back abruptly, leaving her pressed against the glass with swollen lips and wild eyes.
"I planned to watch you lose everything," I said, straightening my tie with hands that weren't quite steady. "Your company, your security, your precious family legacy. I want you to know what it feels like to have everything stripped away by someone you trusted."
The hurt that flashed across her face was like a knife to the gut, but I forced myself to ignore it.
"And then?" she asked, pushing herself away from the window on legs that seemed slightly unsteady.
"Then I want you to come to me," I said, meeting her eyes directly. "When you have nothing left, when Sterling Industries is nothing but a memory, I want you to come to me and beg."
"Beg for what?"
The question was barely audible, but I heard it clearly enough.
"For everything," I said simply. "For a job, for security, for mercy." I paused, letting my gaze travel deliberately down her body and back up to her face. "For me."
The silence that followed was deafening. We stood there staring at each other, two people who'd once shared everything now separated by an ocean of hurt and betrayal and still-burning desire.
Finally, Isabella straightened her jacket and walked back to her chair with as much dignity as she could muster.
"Cross Enterprises' offer is rejected," she said, her voice steady despite the fact that her hands were shaking slightly. "Sterling Industries is not for sale, and it never will be."
I nodded, having expected nothing less. "Then I suppose we'll do this the hard way."
"I suppose we will."
I gathered my papers and moved toward the door, but stopped just before reaching it.
"Isabella?"
She looked up, and for just a moment I saw the eighteen-year-old girl who'd loved me with reckless abandon.
"This is just the beginning," I said softly. "By the time I'm finished, you'll understand exactly what your father took from me. And you'll know why I can never forgive either of you for it."
I left her sitting alone in the conference room, but I could feel her eyes on me until the elevator doors closed between us.