He stood up and stared at me, blinking somberly, like I’d just slapped him in the face. Maybe it felt that way. I doubted a man like Sam was used to hearing the word ‘no.’

“We’re done?” he asked, businesslike. The icy edge to his voice made me shiver.

“Yes,” I said, quickly retying my shoelaces. “Leave me alone. Don’t show up at my clinic anymore and don’t steal kisses from me when we see each other at family functions.”

“Why? Because I don’t love you back?”

He let the word ‘love’ roll out of his mouth like it was profanity. I licked my lips. Dawn was breaking outside beyond the pine trees, and the room began to wash with cool pinks and royal blues, the shadows framing his face making him look even more breathtakingly beautiful than usual.

“No. I can handle it if you don’t love me back. But I won’t accept indifference, humiliation, and unstableness. I am not your plaything. The little teenybopper who stared at you with starry eyes at a carnival. Those days are over. I deserve respect and consideration, and you know what? I changed my mind.” I frowned then began to laugh. A throaty, screechy laugh, not even caring how unhinged I looked anymore. “Yes. I don’t want to have sex with you anymore because you don’t love me back. Is that bad? Immature? Anti-feminist? I expect love. I want it all, so if you don’t intend to give it to me, I suggest you leave me be or I am going to tell my family how you dipped your hand into the honey jar, tasted the forbidden sweetness, then came back for third and fourth helpings.”

“I told you I will never settle down.”

“Then that means you are letting me go.”

He nodded once, sauntering over to the door and throwing it open. A chill rushed into the cabin, biting and claiming every inch of my exposed skin.

“Love is not a price I am willing to pay for pussy, no matter how tight and aristocratic. Goodbye, Aisling.”

He was letting me go.

Maybe I was on a roll because of my own speech, or perhaps the adrenaline still pumped in my blood, but all at once, I gathered my courage, stood up, grabbed my purse, and fled out the door.

He didn’t chase me. I knew he wouldn’t.

Men like Sam never did.

I followed the faint tire signs of the Porsche to find my way out of the woods, clutching my cell phone in a death grip. I slipped several times, and my knees and hands were soaked with melted snow. When I reached the main road, I called an Uber then continued walking. The foolish, desperate hope flaring in my chest that Sam would find me shrank more and more with each step I took.

My toes were numb, my fingers had frostbite, and I could feel myself coming down with something.

I played with the monster under my bed and felt the wrath of its claws on my skin.

This was all on me.

But that didn’t mean I had to put up with it anymore.

It was like my love for him had snuffed out after teetering on the brink of death for a while. A love that started as a sun-shaped blaze when I was seventeen, big and hot and impossible to extinguish, but as time passed, Sam’s actions doused water on it until there was barely anything left.

I slipped into the back of an Uber, thinking about that night at the carnival.

About the text I’d seen scribbled on that bathroom.

Maybe it wasn’t meant for me.

Maybe it was meant for someone with a happy ending.

A few days after Aisling fled the cabin, Troy breezed into my office, tossing a newspaper onto my desk.

“Checkmate.”

I was sitting in front of a pile of Excel spreadsheets, trying to concentrate on the simple task of finding a way to help a client launder a couple of millions. Normally, I could do it with my eyes closed, hands tied, and dick buried deep inside a random. Shuffle the sum from place to place. Blow up expenses. Tamper with bank statements. Making money untraceable was an art form I’d perfected from a young age. It made me a darling in certain corporate circles. Nothing bought your way into a rich man’s heart better than helping him screw the IRS over.

These last few days, however, my head was so deep inside my ass, I was surprised I didn’t drop dead from lack of oxygen. My thoughts were on a loop, getting stuck on the same thing over and over again.

I saved Aisling.

Put my life in danger to keep her from harm’s way.

And what did the bitch do? She turned me down and cut me off.

I glanced at the newspaper Troy threw at my desk. The headline smeared in cheap, black ink.

Busted! Billionaire Gerald Fitzpatrick’s Mistress Writes an Explosive Tell-All!

Barbara McAllister’s testimonies could be a game changer for the royal American family. The company’s stock has dropped significantly since yesterday.

It did nothing to improve my sour mood, even though I knew, in all probability, that Gerald was on the verge of hurling himself out the window from the skyscraper he was currently holed up in.

Troy fell into the seat in front of me, lounging back, rolling a toothpick in his mouth.

“Time for a quick and efficient K.O., Sam. I will not sit here and watch you destroy a perfectly good family just because you have a boner for Gerald’s blood. Don’t forget your sister’s marriage and happiness is on the line, too. You are taking this God complex too far.”

“There’s nothing complicated about my godly gift to distribute pain. I’m merely giving Gerald what he deserves.” I dropped my pen, sitting back. “He—”

“Yes, I know. Killed your unborn brother. Made your mother leave you behind. No one is propositioning Gerald Fitzpatrick for knighthood.” Troy raised his palm up, cutting through my words. “Yet here you are, alive and fucking well, much to the Bratva’s chagrin. This means whatever damage he inflicted on you didn’t finish the job. So why don’t you get it over with, give him the final blow, call it even and move on?”

Because then I’ll have to face my other Fitzpatrick problem.

The pressing one I’ve been trying to ignore for weeks.

Their daughter.

Aisling stayed far away from me since she fled the cabin in the middle of the night like a dumb horror flick side character, the first to get murdered ten minutes into the film.

I knew she survived our little showdown because I drove by her clinic the following afternoon, just to make sure she hadn’t been chopped up by an axe murderer on her way out of the woods.

Her Prius was parked in front of the main door. She was alive, even if not well.

Consequently, she was also done with my ass.

“I want a confession,” I insisted.

“And I want to fuck my wife ten hours a day. Guess what? Looks like we’re both not getting what we want,” Troy snapped. “What makes you think Gerald is willingly going to come to you and tell you all about how he fucked your mother then fucked you over?” Troy stood up, spitting his toothpick on the floor. “Grow the fuck up, Sam. Your story doesn’t add up, and frankly, with each passing day, I’m starting to think there’s more to this than you’re letting on. You’ve never given a damn about Cat, and yes, she left you, but she’d tried to contact you and you shut her down without a blink of an eye. It’s not the first time you’ve been wronged by one of your clients. You are a pragmatic person. You take things in stride. This is a part of you I don’t know and don’t care to discover. Emotional, messy, and above all—strategically faulty. You are about to make some pretty grave mistakes if you are not careful. I can see it. Be upfront with Gerald or drop it altogether. But this is the last prank you pull on him. Your sister is married to his son, and now that Hunter and Cillian are watching their mother and paying attention, they’ll be on your tail in no time. You understand?”