Chapter 1

“I’m tired of sleeping with you. Let’s break up.”

Six years ago, Harlow Gideon, the pampered eldest daughter of the Gideon family, dropped that sentence on Cillian Emerson and walked away from him without looking back.

Back then, he had been a penniless law student with nothing but talent and a too-clean heart. She had turned around and married Felix Lowell, the mayor’s son.

Six years later, the Gideon family was bankrupt. Harlow was trapped in a violent marriage with Felix Lowell, and she wanted a divorce.

At the lowest, ugliest point in her life, she ran into Cillian Emerson again.

At a cafe.

Harlow sat by the floor-to-ceiling window in sunglasses and a baseball cap, checking her watch every few minutes.

She had an appointment with her divorce attorney today. For some reason, the agreed time had come and gone, and the lawyer still had not arrived. She was just about to call and ask when the cafe door opened and a tall man walked in.

He wore a gray three-piece suit, a black shirt, and a striped tie. Every line of him looked expensive, controlled, untouchable.

The moment he entered, several female baristas kept stealing glances at him. Fair enough. A render-perfect face like that, the kind that looked almost digitally designed, rarely appeared outside a movie set.

Other people were stunned by how handsome he was.

Harlow was stunned because she knew exactly who he was.

The man walking in was her first love. The ex-boyfriend she had dismissed with one brutal line, “I’m tired of sleeping with you.”

Cillian Emerson.

Six years had changed him completely.

In her memory, Cillian always wore a white linen shirt. Gentle, clean, warm around the edges, like the boy next door who would carry your groceries without being asked. The man in front of her had none of that softness left. His features were sharper now, harder, more striking, and his eyes held a cold, invasive edge.

A hunter’s stillness.

Harlow’s heart slammed against her ribs. She pressed down the brim of her cap and prayed Cillian would not see her.

Felix had hit her yesterday. Her face was still bruised.

She did not want Cillian Emerson to see her like this. If he had to remember her, she would rather he remember the spoiled, unreasonable girl who had dumped him with her chin held high. Anything was better than letting him see the wreckage her marriage had made of her.

Unfortunately, God was clearly bored and in a petty mood.

Cillian walked straight to her table, pulled out the chair across from her, and sat down as if he had been expected.

“Sorry. Traffic,” he said.

Harlow stared at him.

What?

Who was Cillian Emerson meeting? Had he sat at the wrong table?

“Sir.” Harlow kept her head lowered. The cap brim and sunglasses hid most of her face, and she deliberately tightened her throat, changing her voice. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. This seat isn’t yours.”

“Miss Gideon.” His voice was calm. “Stop pretending. I’d know you even if you were ash.”

Miss Gideon.

Harlow went rigid.

After the Gideons went under, no one had called her that in a long time.

It used to be Cillian’s favorite name for her. In bed, when he held her too tightly and his voice went rough and blurred against her ear, he would murmur it over and over.

“Miss Gideon, may I come in?”

“Miss Gideon, do you still want it?”

“Miss Gideon, say you love me.”

All those breath-tangled, skin-warm, possessive memories surged up at once.

But today, when Cillian said Miss Gideon, there was no heat in it. No intimacy.

Only hatred, sharp enough to show its blade.

“Sir, I’m not the person you’re looking for.” Harlow forced herself to continue the act. “Please leave. The person I’m meeting will be here soon.”

“August Zane isn’t coming.” Cillian ordered coffee, then said, unhurried, “I’ll be handling your divorce case.”

Harlow’s head snapped up. “Why? I already had an appointment with Mr. Zane.”

Cillian’s mouth curved faintly.

“Finally decided to look at me.”

Harlow went still.

Behind the dark lenses, Cillian’s gaze was unreadable. Calm, controlled, and unmistakably above her. The kind of authority money and status polished until it gleamed.

She could not afford to care. “Why isn’t Mr. Zane coming?”

“August Zane committed multiple serious ethics violations while practicing law. He was removed from the firm today.”

“We spoke last night, and today he’s out at the firm? That’s convenient.” Harlow’s voice tightened. “Cillian Emerson, you did this on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Why would I do that? To see you?” He let out a cold laugh. “Harlow Gideon, do you really think I’m still hung up on you?”

Of course Harlow was not that delusional.

She knew he hated her. No man kept longing for the woman who had ground his pride into the dirt.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I meant you might have done it on purpose just to watch me make a fool of myself.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

So he admitted it.

He really had come to watch her fall apart.

Harlow had expected it, more or less. But hearing him say it still sent a slow ache through her chest.

In the six years since she married into the Lowell family, her marriage had been cold, her in-laws had disliked her, and after the Gideons went bankrupt, the Lowells stopped pretending to respect her at all. Life had been a dull blade dragged over bone. The pride that once belonged to Miss Gideon had been worn down by reality until almost nothing remained.

Plenty of people wanted to watch her humiliation.

But if anyone had truly earned the right, it was Cillian Emerson.

“If you came to see the show,” Harlow said, “then I might as well give you the full performance.”

She took off her sunglasses and cap.

She had not put on makeup today. Her pale skin was like clean paper, which only made the red mark at her temple and the purple bruising near her eye more brutal.

Cillian’s gaze darkened at once.

His fingers tightened around the coffee cup. Tendons stood out along the back of his hand.

Felix Lowell, that animal.

“Enjoying yourself?” Harlow’s voice trembled despite her best effort. “If this isn’t enough, I can give commentary. This cut on my forehead is from an ashtray. The bruise by my eye is from—”

“Enough. Shut up.”

Cillian felt as if something sharp had been driven straight into his chest, the pain spreading in relentless waves.

“This was your choice,” he said, each word cold. “You brought this on yourself.”

“Yes. It was my choice. Everything is what I deserve.” Harlow’s eyes burned behind the bruises as she looked at him. “And now that you’ve seen how badly my life turned out, maybe you can let it go. What happened back then was my fault. I’m sorry. From now on, we’re even.”