DOMINIC'S POV
Dominic Steele was thirty-five years old and had never felt anything he couldn't control.
That was the problem.
He sat in his office on the fifty-second floor of his building, watching the city sleep below him, and realized he was bored. Again. Still. Forever. The acquisition he'd just completed had cost three hundred jobs and made him forty million dollars. He'd signed the paperwork without reading it because the details didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered.
His assistant had left a file on his desk three hours ago. Sarah Chen. Age twenty-five. Chen Designs. A startup that his research team had flagged as potentially disruptive to the sustainable fashion market. They thought he should acquire it, strip it for parts, and eliminate the competition.
Usually, he would have already destroyed her.
But something about the file made him hesitate.
He'd watched her pitch video twice. Once was enough to understand the numbers. Twice was weakness. Twice meant something was wrong with him. In the video, she stood in front of investors wearing a dress made from recycled materials and talked about changing the fashion industry like she actually believed the world could be different. Like kindness was possible. Like her dreams mattered.
Her face when she talked about her vision was raw.
Dominic had spent his entire life learning that rawness was a liability. His father had taught him that. The man had built an empire by crushing anything soft in his path. Kindness was weakness. Dreams were for people too stupid to face reality. Love was a tool people used to manipulate you.
Dominic had learned the lesson so well that by the time his father died, Dominic had become something his father would have been proud of. A machine. A weapon. A man who could destroy another person's life and feel nothing but the satisfaction of a successful business deal.
He'd bought seventeen companies this way.
But Sarah Chen terrified him.
Not because she was smart. She was, but smart was common. She terrified him because she still believed in things. She trusted people. She looked at the world like it could be saved instead of conquered. She was the opposite of everything he'd been taught to be.
Which meant she was dangerous.
Which meant he needed to test himself. Prove that he was strong enough to resist whatever this feeling was. Prove that he could be close to her innocence without being contaminated by it. Prove that he was hard enough to destroy her and walk away without looking back.
Dominic made his decision while staring at her pitch video.
He was going to invest in her company. He was going to get close to her. He was going to show her that the world was cruel and that people couldn't be trusted and that her dreams were foolish. And then he was going to take everything from her, just to prove he was strong enough to survive the loss.
It would be the perfect test.
He'd called her from his car on the drive to Brooklyn.
Now he pulled up to the warehouse address she'd given him and saw her through the window. She was still awake. Still working. Still hopeful. The sight of her made something shift in his chest and he hated it. He hated feeling anything at all.
Dominic stepped out of his car and walked toward the warehouse entrance.
The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and found her standing in front of a wall of sketches, her hair messy and her dress wrinkled from hours of work. She turned when she heard him and for a second, her face showed everything. Surprise. Confusion. Fear. The kind of honest emotion that people usually hid.
She didn't hide it.
"Mr. Steele," she said, and her voice was smaller than it had been on the phone. "You really came."
"You doubted I would?"
She laughed a little, nervous. "It's past one in the morning. Most people sleep."
Most people weren't hunters.
Dominic walked deeper into the warehouse and looked around. It was small. Cramped. The equipment was old and the lighting was terrible. But the sketches. God, the sketches were something else. They showed a mind that worked differently than his. A mind that saw possibility instead of weakness.
"Show me everything," he said.
Sarah spent the next hour walking him through her designs, her vision, her five-year plan. She talked about sustainable manufacturing and ethical labor practices. She talked about proving that beauty didn't require waste. She talked like her words could change the world.
Dominic listened and felt the dangerous pull of her optimism. The way she moved her hands when she was excited. The way her eyes lit up when she talked about her dream. The way she looked at him like maybe, just maybe, he was someone who could help her.
He was someone who was going to destroy her.
"Your work is extraordinary," he said, moving closer to her. Close enough to see her breath catch. Close enough to see the small hope bloom across her face. Close enough to know that what he was about to do would break something inside her that might never fully heal.
She looked at him like she'd been waiting for someone like him her whole life.
That was what made it beautiful.
That was what made it possible.
"I want to be your partner," he said, and he meant it. Not in the way she hoped. In the way a predator means it when it sees prey.
Sarah's face transformed.
Hope. Pure, unguarded hope.
She had no idea what she'd just agreed to.
She had no idea that the man standing in front of her had already decided to destroy her.