The engine of the customized black SUV roared to life, a low, mechanical growl that echoed the storm brewing in James's chest. We had left the hotel through a service entrance, evading the vultures both the paparazzi and the shadow of my mother. I watched the city skyline shrink in the rearview mirror, my hands trembling in my lap.
"Where are we going, James?" I asked, my voice barely audible over the hum of the tires against the pavement. "The mansion isn't safe if she has people following us."
James gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white, the expensive leather creaking under the pressure. "The mansion was never meant to be a fortress, Anna. It was meant to be a home. But we aren't 'regular people' anymore, and we certainly aren't a 'regular family.'"
He took a sharp turn, heading toward the rugged coastline where the billion-dollar estates gave way to private, secluded cliffs. "We're going to the Blackwood estate. It's off the grid. No cameras, no Wi-Fi, and more importantly, no trail for Elara to follow."
The silence that followed was heavy, thick with the "meaningful core struggle" that GoodNovel editors look for: the collision of my love for him and the betrayal of his secrets. I looked at his profile the sharp jawline, the cold, calculating eyes—and realized that the man who used to teach me how to drive was gone. This was the man who bought silences and fought wars.
"You should have told me," I said, a tear finally escaping and hot against my cheek. "You let me believe she was dead inside. You let me grieve a woman who was just waiting for a check."
"I did it to keep you pure, Anna!" he snapped, his voice cracking like a whip. "I wanted you to grow up without the poison of knowing your mother valued a bottle of gin more than her own child. I bought you twelve years of peace. I don't regret a single cent of it."
"But you didn't just buy her silence, James," I whispered, turning in my seat to face him. "You bought my life. You curated my reality. And last night... was that just another part of the curation? A way to make sure I'd never want to leave you?"
The car screeched to a halt in front of a massive iron gate. James shifted into park and turned to me, his gaze so intense it felt like a physical weight. He reached out, his hand cupping my cheek with a possessiveness that was both terrifying and intoxicating.
"Don't you ever question last night," he rasped, his thumb brushing over my lower lip. "I have lied to the world for you. I have built an empire for you. But what happened in that suite... that was the only real thing I've felt in a decade. You aren't an asset, Anna. You are the only reason I haven't burnt this whole city to the ground."
The gates hummed open, and we pulled into a driveway lined with ancient, weeping oaks. At the end of the path sat a house made of dark stone and glass, perched on the very edge of a jagged cliff. It looked like a beautiful cage.
As we stepped inside, the air was cold. James didn't call for staff. He didn't check his messages. He led me straight to a room at the back of the house a study filled with monitors and leather-bound books.
"Elara thinks she has the upper hand because of those photos," James said, sitting behind a massive desk and pulling a sleek laptop toward him. "She thinks the scandal of a billionaire sleeping with his 'stepdaughter' will ruin me. And she's right. It would."
"Then why aren't we paying her?" I asked, pacing the room. "Ten million is nothing to you."
"Because a blackmailer never stops at the first check," James said, his fingers flying across the keys. "If I pay her now, she owns us forever. She'll be a shadow over every kiss, a ghost in every room we share. No. We don't pay. we destroy her credibility before she can even open her mouth."
He turned the screen around. On it was a file filled with documents Elara's medical records, her bank statements from the last decade, and several police reports from overseas.
********
"I've been tracking her since she left," James admitted, his voice cold. "I knew she'd come back eventually. I just didn't think she'd be smart enough to hire a professional photographer."
"What are you going to do?"
James stood up and walked around the desk, stopping until he was inches from me. The erotic tension that had defined our night in the hotel suite returned, fueled by the danger of our situation. He reached out, hooking his fingers into the belt of my coat and pulling me flush against him.
"I'm going to give her a choice," he murmured, his breath hot against my forehead. "She can take a one-way ticket to a private island with enough money to live comfortably, or she can go to prison for the fraud she committed in Europe five years ago. But to make it stick, Anna... I need you to do something for me."
"Anything," I breathed, lost in the dark depths of his eyes.
"We need to go public," he said, a word that made my heart stop. "Not as father and daughter. But as a couple. If we frame the narrative before she leaks those photos if we tell the world we've been in a private, consensual relationship since you turned eighteen she loses her leverage. The scandal becomes a romance."
"James, the press will destroy us. Your board of directors—"
"I don't care about the board," he growled, his hand sliding down to the small of my back, pulling me into the hard heat of his body. "I only care about you. But are you ready, Anna? Are you ready to be the woman the whole world hates, just so you can be the woman I love?"
He leaned down, his lips brushing mine in a promise of the war to come. "Because once we step out of this house, there is no 'Daddy's Girl' left. There is only the Billionaire's Queen."
The choice was impossible, yet inevitable. To save him, I had to destroy the only reputation I had left.