Chapter Four
Her Ruin, His Salvation
POV:Ayla
When I woke, the silence was louder than any scream.
The black box lay where I'd left it on the marble table, lid gaping like a mouth that had swallowed nothing. The ring — Dominic's mysterious heirloom — was gone. Not a trace. My pulse thudded a steady, accusing rhythm against my ribs.
I pressed my palms into the sheets until the mattress hummed beneath them, as if pressure could force the memory back into place. Did I dream it? The hollow where the ring should have been answered for me. The absence felt heavier than the object itself.
I moved on instinct: pulled on black jeans, a soft blouse, shoved my hair into something that passed for tame. I caught my face in the hallway mirror — eyes pale, pupils blown wide — and for a moment the reflection seemed like someone else's problem. There was no time for slow thinking. I needed answers and the kind that moved.
Downstairs the penthouse was absurdly perfect. Cold air hummed through vents; the marble floors gleamed; the furniture sat in clinical, expensive silence. There was no scent of last night's cologne, no coffee ring on the counter, no discarded tie across the chair. It was as though Dominic had never been with me at all, as though the night had been a neatly edited film with every incriminating frame cut out.
My phone buzzed on the console. I almost didn't reach for it — half-expecting the screen to hold a lie — but the message waited, brief and precise.
Unknown Number: Suite 2801. Today. Midnight. No excuses.
My breath snagged on the words. I didn't respond. I didn't want to give the unknown anything to work with.
A knock at the door was quick and practiced. Two men in dark suits stood in the entry when I opened it — professional, unreadable, the kind of men who never asked questions aloud. One of them said, almost gently, "Miss Atherton?"
"—Ayla," I corrected before I could think better.
He inclosed the correction in a small shake of his head. "Ms. Atherton, per Mr. Crane's instructions."
They didn't wait for thanks. They set an envelope in my hand — heavy, embossed — and retreated without another look.
I slipped the flap. An invitation fell into my palm: a charity gala that very night at the Crane Foundation hall. Dress code: black tie. Time: tonight. Beneath the flourish of gold calligraphy was a sentence I didn't need: the table had already been set.
They'd rolled out the red carpet for my ruin.
—
The hall smelled of lilies and expensive dust. Crystal chandeliers threw shards of light across polished floors and satin gowns. Cameras popped at the edges of the room, flash after flash puncturing the dark like little gunshots. People smiled with their mouths and sharpened their claws with their eyes. I felt like a silhouette stitched into someone else's photograph.
Maya was a bright dot in the center of all of it — radiant, insulated in laughter. She moved like she had nowhere private to be, like every smile around her was earned. Ryan stood close, his posture practiced, a glass of champagne a shield in his hand. They were the kind of perfect couple whose ease made strangers cursive with envy. My stomach folded inside me.
I traced the room with a slow, merciless clarity. Every conversation clustered into the past I didn't want on display. Every familiar face felt like a witness. Betrayal sat on the edge of every table, draped in satin and expectancy.
Then Dominic arrived.
He stepped into the light like he'd written the scene himself: clean tux, everything in him tuned to danger. He moved across the room with that calm weight of a man who expected to be followed. When he reached me, he leaned in close enough that the scent of him — cedar and smoke — ghosted against my ear.
"Tonight, you are mine in every way. Let it show," he whispered.
I swallowed. The words were ownership wrapped in silk. "What have you done?" I asked, because there was no other question that mattered.
He dropped the envelope into my hand again, as if the paper could explain the arrangement of the night. "Just the beginning," he said, voice low and absolute.
The music changed like a signal. Lamps dimmed. A hush pushed through the crowd and the chatter thinned into a pinned, brittle sound. Cameras pivoted. All attention threaded toward the stage like a single needle.
On the screen behind Maya and Ryan, images started to flicker.
First: photographs — Maya and Ryan in positions that denied the casualness of their public composure, kissing, bodies intimate(having sex). Then: screenshots of my private messages, lines meant for a single pair of eyes now blown up and legible to a hundred. After that: a short clip, grainy but damning — Maya leaning toward Ryan, whispering while I wasn't looking.
Gasps rose — small at first, then multiplying. The room filled with the kind of silence that sounded like a held breath. I clutched Dominic's arm as if the touch could anchor me from slipping. He didn't flinch.
Maya turned, her face losing whatever easy radiance it had worn like armor. For the first time she looked like a person who had been pulled onto a stage without rehearsal. Ryan's jaw tightened; whatever mask he carried sank in an instant.
My phone buzzed against my palm. A single message. My thumb trembled as I opened it.
"You were never supposed to see this."
The projector blinked out. The screen went black as if someone had closed a lid on the room. For a second the world felt rewound, everyone left suspended in the dark between frames.
Maya blinked. Ryan's expression hardened into something carved and sharp. Dominic lifted his chin and met my gaze, unblinking, almost pleased.
The lights came back with a slow, deliberate tide. When they did, the room looked smaller, hotter — like a witness box. People were rearranging themselves into questions; whispers swelled into accusations. Cameras burned like small suns in the space between faces. I felt the press of a hundred eyes like hands.
Around us, guests leaned in, lips forming words that never found their way out. Servers moved through the crowd in a choreography of ignorance, balancing trays that suddenly seemed heavy with meaning. A woman near the stage mopped at her lip as if that gesture could remove what she'd seen. Someone laughed once, too high, and the sound snapped like a twig.
I stayed still. Dominic's hand on my arm was a claim and a challenge. I could feel his calm like an invisible weight. The envelope — the thin, gilded thing — burned against my palm.
My mind catalogued everything: the blank box, the message, the men at my door, the invitation. It fit into a shape that was beginning to look less like accident and more like architecture. Someone had designed this moment with care. Someone had placed the pieces where they would cut the deepest.
Maya's mouth opened and closed—no sound that anyone could hear. Ryan's fingers flexed around his glass until the crystal sighed. People edged closer, not to help but to witness. The cameras clicked and whirred like a small animal caught in a trap.
I thought of the ring. Of the small, stupid way it had felt on my finger, and how quickly something that private had been exposed. I thought of Dominic's whisper, his promise of ownership, and how promises in his voice always came with strings.
Tonight, the world would know everything.
As the final bulbs burned back to life and conversations started jagging like torn paper, the truth settled across the room like a new scent. It was sharp and cold and undeniable.
I felt it then — a rush under my skin, a danger that was not at all distant. My hands tightened around the envelope until the paper bent. My throat went dry.
This war stops at nothing.