The bar was a blur of low amber light and too-sweet smoke, but Grace was already drowning long before the tequila reached her tongue. She sat alone at the end of the counter, legs crossed too tightly, the hem of her black silk dress riding high enough to make the bartender glance twice. She didn’t care. She wanted to be seen. She wanted to be taken apart.

“Another,” she rasped, sliding the empty glass forward. Her voice sounded foreign in her own ears—diminutive, cracked, hungry.

The men around her were boys. Pretty, eager, twenty-something boys who smelled like cologne and gym memberships. They smiled too easily, touched her arm too gently. She hated them. She hated the way Ethan had smiled, the way he had promised forever and then vanished with nothing but a text that read I can’t do this anymore.

She needed the opposite of gentle. She needed age, weight, and cruelty. She needed a man whose hands had done things—terrible, irreversible things—and who wouldn’t flinch when she begged for worse.

“Someone old enough to be my father,” she muttered into her glass, loud enough for the couple beside her to stiffen. She laughed, bitter and wet. “Someone who knows exactly how to break a little girl like me.”

The words tasted like sin, and she swallowed them anyway.

She left before last call, heels unsteady on the marble floor of the hotel lobby. The concierge recognized her—Reed Global’s princess, the heiress who never paid for anything—and handed her the key she demanded without question. Suite 4001. The Chairman’s private floor. Off-limits to everyone.

She didn’t care whose it was. She only cared that it was empty and dark and high enough above the city that no one would hear her scream.

The elevator climbed too slowly. When the doors slid open, the suite breathed around her—cold air, leather, something sharp and expensive that made her stomach flip with a memory she couldn’t name. She kicked the door shut behind her and let the darkness swallow her whole.

The bed was enormous, sheets black as oil. She fell face-first into them and inhaled.

The scent hit her like a slap. Sandalwood, tobacco, something darker underneath—like skin after sex and money and power. Her drunk brain short-circuited. She knew this smell. She had known it as a child, curled against a broad chest while a deep voice read her stories she was too young to understand. A ghost. A myth. The man who had left her mother crying in the kitchen and never came back.

Daddy.

The word slipped out unbidden, muffled into the pillow, and heat flooded her thighs so violently she whimpered.

She tore at her dress—zipper snarling, silk ripping—until she was naked and trembling on the sheets. The air was cold against her flushed skin. She spread her legs shamelessly, fingers sliding down to where she was already soaked, desperate circles that did nothing to ease the ache.

“Please,” she whispered to the empty room. “Please ruin me.”

The door opened without a sound.

He was only a silhouette at first—tall, broad, moving with the absolute certainty of a man who owned everything he looked at. The light from the hallway cut across the sharp lines of his suit, the silver at his temples, the complex set of his jaw. Older. Cold. Exactly what she’d begged the universe for.

Grace’s breath hitched. She couldn’t see his face clearly, but her body knew. Some animal part of her rolled over and bared its throat.

She slid off the bed and crawled to him on shaking knees, carpet burning her skin, tears already streaking her mascara.

“Daddy,” she sobbed, the word raw and broken. “Please, Daddy, I need it to hurt.”

Apollo Reed stood frozen in the doorway, the keycard still in his hand. The dim light caught the curve of her cheek, the bow of her mouth—features he’d watched grow from photographs his security team sent every year. Features that were his own, mirrored back at him in devastating perfection.

His daughter. On her knees. Calling him Daddy while her thighs glistened with how much she wanted to be destroyed.

Logic screamed. Every moral fiber he possessed roared in denial.

But the darker thing inside him—the thing that had built an empire on ruined men and broken promises—unfurled like a black flower.

He stepped inside. The door clicked shut.

Grace whimpered at the sound, pressing her cheek to the expensive wool of his trousers, fingers clawing at his belt. “Please,” she chanted, voice cracking. “Fuck me like you hate me. Make me forget he ever existed.”

Apollo’s hand settled on her head—slow, deliberate. His fingers threaded through her hair and yanked her head back so hard her scalp burned. She cried out, the sound wet and grateful.

“You called me,” he said, voice gravel and smoke. “You begged for a daddy cruel enough to break you.” His grip tightened until tears spilled down her cheeks. “Careful what you wish for, princess.”

He pushed her backward onto the carpet, following her down until his weight pinned her entirely. She writhed beneath him, frantic, legs wrapping around his hips as if she could pull him inside her by sheer desperation.

Clothes tore. Belt buckle clinked. His cock—thick, terrifyingly hard—sprang free and slapped heavy against her stomach. Grace sobbed at the size of it, hips bucking uselessly.

“Beg,” he growled against her throat, teeth scraping the tendon there.

“Daddy, please—please fuck me, please hurt me, I’ll be so good—”

He drove into her in one brutal thrust.

The scream that ripped from her throat was inhuman—half pain, half relief. He filled her so completely her vision whited out, walls fluttering helplessly around the invasion. Wet sounds filled the room—obscene, rhythmic slaps of skin on skin as he set a punishing pace, hips slamming into hers hard enough to bruise.

“Ah—ah—Daddy!” she wailed with every thrust, nails raking down his back, drawing blood through the shirt. “Harder—please—break me—”

He snarled and flipped her over, yanking her hips up until she was on all fours. One hand fisted in her hair, arching her spine; the other came down on her ass with a crack that echoed. She jolted forward, crying out, pussy clenching so tight he groaned.

“Like that?” he rasped, spanking her again, until her skin glowed red and she was sobbing into the carpet. “Is this what my dirty little girl needs?”

“Yes—yes—Daddy, I’m yours—only yours—”

He slammed back inside her, deeper from this angle, the head of his cock battering her cervix with every thrust. Her whole body shook, breasts swinging, sweat dripping between them. The room filled with the wet squelch of her cunt taking him, her broken moans, his low animal grunts.

She came without warning—violently, vision sparking black, walls spasming so hard she milked him with every pulse. A gush of wetness soaked his thighs, the carpet beneath them.

“Good girl,” he praised darkly, not slowing. “Come on, Daddy’s cock like the desperate slut you are.”

He followed moments later, burying himself to the hilt and spilling inside her with a guttural sound that was almost a roar. Heat flooded her, thick and endless, marking her from the inside out.

Grace collapsed, trembling, tears and drool smearing the carpet. He stayed inside her, chest heaving, one possessive hand splayed over the small of her back.

“You’ll never want another man,” he whispered against her ear, voice raw. “Not after tonight. Not ever again.”

She whimpered, clenching weakly around him, already craving more.

In the darkness, the scent of him surrounded her.

And for the first time in years, Grace felt like she was exactly where she belonged—ruined, claimed, and finally, finally home.