“Do you know how ungrateful you sound?” her, eyes narrowing across the marble kitchen of the penthouse like I’m some charity case. “Everything you have, everything you wear, the roof over your head, his name paid for it. And you’re standing there acting like I committed a crime?”

“You did.” I slam the drawer shut with a snap, the echo vibrating through my bones. “You married a man you barely know for money. For power.”

“No, darling.” Her voice turns syrup-sweet and cruel. “I married a man with vision. With control. With status. Something your pathetic little heartbreaks and rebellion-fueled flings clearly can’t give you.”

I flinch. Not because it’s untrue. But because I fucked the very man she calls her husband.

And I loved it.

And I hate myself for loving it.

“You don’t even love him,” I spit. “You just saw a billionaire and opened your legs.”

“And you wouldn't?” she snaps back, her glass thudding against the marble as she steps closer, heels clicking like gunshots. “Let’s not play the innocent, Zara. You’ve been crawling into beds since you were seventeen trying to fill a void you created.”

I laugh bitterly, dark and twisted. “At least I didn’t marry my way into privilege. I fucked it. Then I left before I started to rot.”

She slaps me.

Open palm. Diamond ring. Red sting.

It doesn’t hurt.

But the silence that follows does.

“You should be thanking me,” she whispers with venom. “Without me, you’d still be broke, still chasing men with guns and grudges who don’t give a damn whether you live or die.”

“Without you,” I whisper coldly, “I wouldn’t be trapped in this fake-glass empire. Pretending to smile at men who want to fuck me because I look like your younger, dirtier version.”

She takes a deep breath, and I know that breath—it’s restraint. My mother doesn’t lose control. Not in public. Not in private. But right now, her composure is hanging by a thread.

“You’ll learn one day,” she says quietly. “Men like Sebastian don’t share power. He’ll own you soon enough. One way or another.”

I freeze.

Because it doesn’t sound like a warning.

It sounds like a threat.

By the time I got home, I couldn’t feel my legs.

But the moment I stepped into the penthouse, reality slammed back.

Sebastian was waiting.

The man I should have never fucked.

The one I was still trying to forget.

He was in the kitchen in his goddamn white dress shirt, sleeves rolled, sipping whiskey like he hadn’t turned my body into a memory palace I couldn’t escape.

“Where have you been?” he asked without looking up.

“You’re not my father,” I said.

“But I am your stepfather now.” He finally looked at me, eyes dark as oil. “Which makes this…” He walked over, grabbed my chin. “Very complicated, doesn’t it, princess?”

I hated that word from his lips.

Because when he said princess, it sounded like a threat.

“Complicated?” I scoffed. “You didn’t think it was complicated when you were balls deep inside me three weeks ago.”

His jaw flexed. “You disappeared. Again.”

“Maybe I found a better dick.”

That did it.

His hand slammed into the wall beside my head. “Better than mine?”

I grinned, wicked. “So much better I forgot your name.”

His fingers wrapped around my throat.

And just like that, I was wet again.

Fuck!.

“Are you trying to get punished, Zara?”

“Depends,” I rasped. “You finally gonna stop pretending I’m not what you really want to fuck?”

He kissed me right there. Violent. Possessive. Brutal.

It was always like this with him. A war.

And I was tired of fighting.

"You just don’t fucking learn, do you?" He growled

“I could say the same about you.”

“You’re still pissed I make your cock hard even when you hate me.”

His eyes darkened. That old familiar snarl curled on his lips, the one that meant violence or sex. Or both. “You think this is a game?”

“I know it is,” I whispered. “And I’m fucking good at it.”

He was on me in seconds, slamming me into the wall. His hand gripped my jaw, fingers rough against my cheek. “You're cocky for a bitch who betrays everyone she fucks.”

“And you’re still obsessed with a bitch you claim to hate,” I hissed.

His eyes burned. “You think I don’t know what you did last night?”

Oh, he knew. Why would he care?

The same fucking man who'd walk into my mother’s bed hours later, pretending he hadn’t had his tongue in my throat and my thighs on his shoulders.

“You let him touch you.” His voice was low. Dangerous. “You let that bastard fuck you.”

“Fuck you.” I shoved him. He didn’t move. “You don’t get to judge me. You’re not my fucking owner.”

“No?” His hand slid between my legs, pressing over my cunt. “Then why are you soaking through your panties for me, baby?”

I gasped, hips jerking. His touch was punishing, possessive.

“You hate me, remember?” I panted. “You should want to kill me, not…”

“I do want to kill you,” he growled against my neck. “I want to fuck you so hard you forget he ever existed.”

I clawed at his shirt. “Then do it.”

His lips ghosted over mine. “Beg me first.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.” He slid his fingers under my panties, dragging them slow down my thighs. “Beg me to ruin you.”

I shook my head. “Fuck you.”

He grinned. “Already did. But you keep coming back.”

He stepped back, eyes blazing. “On your knees.”

I stood frozen.

“Now.”

I dropped, thighs trembling, mouth dry. He unzipped his pants, thick cock already hard. But instead of letting me touch, he gripped my hair and dragged my face close enough to smell him, feel the heat, the hunger radiating off his skin.

And then he stepped back.

“Touch yourself,” he ordered.

My breath hitched. “Just fu..”

He slapped my thigh. “Now. Or I’ll leave you wet and begging.”