James's POV
James lay on the guest bed in his own mansion and didn't sleep.
He couldn't sleep. Couldn't move. Could barely breathe. His entire body felt like it was disconnected from his brain, like his mind was somewhere far away watching all of this happen to someone else.
Grace was asleep somewhere down the hall.
In his mansion. Their mansion. A place he'd tried to forget existed.
At 4:58 AM, he couldn't take it anymore. He sat up and dialed his lawyer's personal number. The number he was supposed to use only for actual emergencies. This was an emergency. This was his entire world collapsing.
His lawyer, David Chen, picked up on the second ring like he'd been waiting for this call.
"Tell me she doesn't own my house," James said before David could even say hello.
There was a long pause.
"She owns your house," David said quietly.
James felt something inside his chest explode. He got out of bed and started pacing, his bare feet silent on the wooden floor. He needed David to be wrong. Needed there to be some loophole, some legal trick, something that would undo what Grace had done.
"How is that possible? I bought that property fifteen years ago. I put everything into that property. She has no claim to it."
David sighed. It was the kind of sigh a lawyer makes when they're about to deliver bad news and they know it's going to hurt. "She purchased the mansion six months ago through a shell company. Everything was legal and binding. Clean transaction. No red flags."
James stopped pacing. Six months. While he was in Tokyo closing deals, while he was building his empire bigger and bigger and bigger, Grace was buying his house out from under him. Grace was planning this. Grace was hunting him.
"That's fraud," he said desperately. "That's theft. That's something. We can fight this."
"It's not fraud if it was legal," David said, and his voice sounded almost sympathetic now. "James, I'm looking at the original property agreement from when you purchased the mansion initially. There's a clause in there. I've never seen anything like it, but it's there. And it's legal."
James waited. The silence felt like a physical thing pressing down on him.
"The clause states that if both owners occupy the property simultaneously, neither owner can force the other to leave for a period of six months. During those six months, ownership automatically transfers to whoever has the longest continuous occupancy."
James had to sit down. His legs suddenly wouldn't hold him up.
"Grace has been living there for six months?" he asked quietly.
"According to my research, yes. She's the longest occupant. Which means she owns the property unless you can prove she's a threat to the property or the property's integrity. Do you have any evidence of that?"
James thought about Grace in the kitchen. Making coffee. Looking at him with fire in her eyes. Being perfectly composed and perfectly legal and perfectly brilliant.
"No," he said. "She's not a threat."
"Then she owns it," David said. "I'm sorry, James. This is unusual, but it's ironclad. You're going to need to accept that the property now belongs to her."
James couldn't breathe. He stood up and walked to the window. The ocean was just barely visible in the darkness. The sun wasn't up yet. The world hadn't woken up. But everything was different now.
"How long?" he asked. "How long before the ownership officially transfers?"
"Six months from when she first occupied the property. That would make it approximately four months from now."
Four months. He had four months living in the same house as his ex-wife before he lost the only piece of his old life that mattered.
"There has to be something," James said, and he could hear the desperation in his own voice. He didn't care. "There has to be some way out of this."
David was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter.
"There's one loophole," he said slowly. "The clause resets if both occupants leave the property simultaneously. If you both leave at the same time, neither of you owns it. The property goes into legal limbo until one of you moves back in."
James's heart jumped. There was a way out. There was a way to undo this. He just had to get Grace to leave with him.
"But," David continued, and James knew there was going to be a but, "if only one of you leaves, the remaining occupant owns the property outright. Permanently. It becomes theirs completely."
The hope died as quickly as it had appeared.
"So if I leave, she owns it," James said flatly.
"Yes."
"And if she leaves, I own it."
"Yes."
"But I can't force her to leave because that violates the clause."
"Correct. You're trapped, James. I'm sorry. She planned this very carefully."
James hung up without saying goodbye. He stood in the dark guest bedroom of a house that didn't belong to him anymore and understood finally what Grace had done.
She hadn't just bought the property.
She'd bought him.
She'd made it impossible for him to run away. She'd trapped him here in this house with memories and ghosts and the girl he'd married five years ago. She'd made him stay whether he wanted to or not.
And the worst part was that some part of him, some small desperate part of him that he'd been trying to kill since the divorce, was actually relieved.
He was about to go downstairs and confront her when his phone buzzed.
A text from Samuel. His CFO. His best friend. The only person who actually knew him.
The text said: We have a problem. Isabelle Crane just made a move. She's trying to acquire your company. Says the timing is perfect because you're distracted. What do I tell her?
James read it three times before the words actually made sense.
Isabelle Crane. His rival. His competitor. The woman he'd rejected years ago and who'd never forgiven him. She was moving now. She was attacking when he was vulnerable.
And she was right. He was distracted. He was standing in a dark bedroom thinking about the woman downstairs instead of thinking about his billion-dollar empire.
He typed back: Hold her off. Tell her I'm still in the game.
But even as he sent the message, he knew it wasn't true.
He was already losing.
And Grace, downstairs in the master bedroom, was probably already awake and already knowing that this would happen. Grace had always been smart about business. She'd started her own company after all. She'd learned from him. She'd learned how to hunt.
James walked downstairs in the darkness.
He needed to see her face. Needed to understand how deep this went. Needed to know if she was doing this to win or if she was doing this for some other reason he couldn't quite name.
He pushed open the master bedroom door.
Grace was awake, sitting up in bed with her laptop open, working on business contracts like she didn't have a care in the world.
Like she didn't just trap a billionaire in his own mansion.
Like she didn't just start a war that was about to destroy everything both of them had built.
She looked up at him, and in her eyes, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
It wasn't triumph.
It was fear.
Raw, naked, terrified fear.
And underneath that fear, he saw something worse.
He saw love.