Chapter Two

Isla

I should have slipped out quietly.

That was the first thought hammering through my skull as I pushed through the gilded crowd, my heels biting into the marble like tiny hammer strikes. I should have been a ghost—slipping past waiters with silver trays, past jeweled women already whispering into manicured hands, past the men raising their brows in disbelief.

Instead, I walked as if I were untouchable. Chin high, steps steady. Pretending I hadn’t just detonated the gala with a kiss.

The ballroom was no longer an orchestra of champagne laughter and violins. It was a cage of whispers, tightening with every step I took.

“She’s lost her mind.”

“She’s clever, I’ll give her that.”

“Criminals always crave spectacle.”

“Do you think he’ll actually keep her?”

The words sliced at me, sharper than stilettos, and yet I let them stick. Let them believe their own versions of the story. My story.

But my lungs burned. The champagne haze was gone, stripped away by the memory of Cassian’s mouth against mine—hard, unyielding, devastating. I could still taste him, even as I fought not to lick my lips like a fool.

Almost there, I told myself. Just a few more feet and I’d be free of the ballroom, free of the glittering eyes and the sticky perfume of judgment. The terrace doors gleamed like salvation.

I reached for the handle.

“Going somewhere?”

The voice was velvet dipped in steel, cutting straight through the chatter.

I froze.

Cassian Valtore leaned against the archway as though he had been waiting for me. Not in a rush, not in a chase—no, he looked carved from stone, the kind of man who didn’t need to pursue because he already owned the ground I stood on. The chandelier’s golden light caught on the edges of his cufflinks, on the cold architecture of his face.

“Fresh air,” I managed. My voice wasn’t weak, but it wasn’t the blade I wanted it to be either.

“After setting the ballroom alight?” His words were soft, but the weight of them pressed down hard. “You think you can step outside and pretend nothing happened?”

I tightened my grip on the door handle. My knuckles went white. “It was a mistake.”

A pause. A flicker of a smirk. “No.” He shook his head once, slow, deliberate. “Mistakes stumble. That was deliberate.”

The heat rose in my face, not embarrassment but fury—at him, at myself, at the fact that he was right.

“What do you want from me?” I spat.

He pushed off the archway with measured grace, closing the space between us without a single wasted step. He didn’t touch me, but the air seemed to warp around him, thick and heavy, as though even the walls bent toward his presence.

“I want to know why Isla Marquez thought kissing me in front of my son was the right move.”

The way he said my name made me flinch. It wasn’t just a name. It was a verdict.

I lifted my chin. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“No,” he agreed easily, voice unhurried. “But you’ll give me one anyway.”

God, I hated that certainty. Hated how calm he was while my pulse was a wild, uneven thing under my skin.

“You think you know me?” My laugh came brittle, sharper than I intended. “You don’t.”

“I know enough.” He let the words roll out slow, a predator circling. “I know you were sent to prison for embezzlement money you never touched. I know Ronan made sure your name carried the stain, while his came out clean. I know you’ve barely been back in this city a month, and already you’re hungry enough for blood to make a scene like this.”

The floor pitched under me. My stomach went hollow.

“Who told you—”

He cut me off with a glance. “I don’t wait for people to tell me. Information comes to me.”

It wasn’t arrogance. It was fact. That was the worst part.

“You think this will wound Ronan?” His words were precise, scalpel-sharp. “At best, you’ve scratched him. By tomorrow morning, the papers will call you desperate. Pathetic. A discarded fiancée clinging to the father because the son refused you.”

The truth of it seared. He was right. Of course he was right. Ronan would twist this scandal until I was a caricature—a bitter woman, groveling for relevance.

My throat burned as I forced out, “And you? What do you gain by cornering me here?”

For the first time, his mask shifted. The smallest crack, but I saw it—the danger there, the shadow of something darker than power.

He leaned in, close enough that the scent of him wrapped around me—cedar and smoke, the kind of richness you couldn’t scrub off once it settled in your skin.

“Who said I came to humiliate you?” His voice lowered, intimate, as though the two of us stood alone in the city. “I came to offer you a way to win.”

The words gripped my heart and squeezed.

“What do you mean?”

He studied me then—not like a man, but like a strategist. As though he were measuring my resolve, testing how far he could push before I broke.

“You want Ronan destroyed. I can give you that.”

My chest went tight. My pulse hammered. He was giving voice to the thing I didn’t dare say aloud.

“And in exchange?”

That ghost of a smile brushed his lips, there and gone. “You’ll marry me.”

The world dropped out from under me.

Marriage.

It was absurd. It was impossible. It was… brilliant.

My laugh came jagged, desperate. “You’re insane.”

Cassian didn’t blink. “Insane would be leaving power on the table when it’s yours for the taking. You want vengeance. Fury won’t carry you far. But power?” His gaze burned straight into me. “Power will.”

The word lodged deep, heavier than any diamond in this room.

“I won’t be your pawn,” I whispered.

He tilted his head slightly, a dismissal, almost amused. “No. You’ll be my queen.”

The words cracked something in me. They rippled outward, impossible to ignore.

I should have walked away. Should have laughed in his face, should have spat at him. Instead, my mind betrayed me—flashing an image of Ronan stripped of everything, his pride in ashes, his smirk gone. And me, higher than him. Stronger than him. Untouchable.

It was poison. Sweet, glittering poison. And I wanted it.

Cassian straightened, his presence loosening, though the weight of him still lingered. “Think on it,” he said, already certain I would. “But don’t take too long. Ronan won’t.”

And just like that, he was gone—folded back into the crowd, swallowed whole by the glitter and gold as though he had never touched my world at all.

I stood frozen at the terrace doors, lips tingling, breath shallow, heart hammering against my ribs.

Marry Cassian Valtore.

Destroy Ronan Mercer.

The choice wasn’t impossible.

It was inevitable.