MAYA POV
Dominic doesn't answer immediately.
He sits in his office chair and stares at the photographs like they might change if he looks at them long enough. Maya watches him and feels something cold slide down her spine. Whatever he's about to say will break something inside her that she can't put back together.
She looks at the photos spread across his desk.
Rubble. Fire. Bodies covered in dust. A restaurant destroyed. Emergency crews everywhere. A date stamped on one of the reports: eight years ago. Her breath catches.
A name at the top of the investigator's file: Richard Chen.
"Oh God," she whispers. "Oh God, what did he do?"
Dominic's voice is quiet when he speaks. Controlled. Like he's had to rehearse these words a thousand times to keep them from destroying him.
"Your father paid people to kill my father and my brother," he says. "They bombed a restaurant where my family ate every Sunday. Eighteen people died. My father. My brother. Sixteen innocent people who had nothing to do with anything."
The world tilts.
Maya sits down because standing requires energy she doesn't have. Her legs won't support her weight. Her mind is spinning trying to reconcile two versions of the same man: the father who braided her hair when she was seven, who held her when her mother died, who told her she was brilliant and beautiful and safe.
And the man who ordered a bombing that killed nineteen people.
"I didn't know," she says.
The words are useless. They don't matter. They don't undo anything.
"No," Dominic agrees. "But you do now."
He stands and walks to the window. The city is sleeping beneath them. Millions of people in their beds, unaware that the world is ending for someone sixty-eight floors up.
"Now you have a choice," Dominic says. "You can help me trace every piece of money your father has hidden. Every illegal operation. Every person he's paid. Every crime he's committed. And together, we can make sure he answers for it."
Maya looks at her hands. They're shaking.
"Or," Dominic continues, "you can refuse. And I'll kill you the same way your father killed my family. Methodically. Without hesitation. Without regret."
"That's not a choice," Maya says.
"No," Dominic replies. "It's not. It's survival. Just like everything else in this world."
She forces herself to look at the photographs again. Not at the destruction. At the people. She can see faces. She can see families in the background. She can see the aftermath of a decision her father made from an office somewhere while she was in school or sleeping or studying for a test.
While she was living her life, her father was ordering the death of strangers.
And when those strangers died, they left behind families. Parents. Children. People who've spent eight years wondering why. People who've spent eight years carrying loss.
People like Dominic.
She looks at him. Really looks at him. She sees it now. The way he moves like something is always missing. The way he watches people like he's calculating whether they'll betray him. The way he can't sleep at three in the morning because the ghosts won't let him.
He's been broken for eight years.
And her father broke him.
"I'll help you," Maya says. Her voice is steady now. Cold. "Not because I'm afraid of you. Because my father deserves to be destroyed. And I want to be the one to do it."
Dominic's expression changes.
It's subtle. A shift in his jaw. A softening in his eyes. Like she just said something that rewires everything he thought he understood about her.
He walks toward her slowly. His movements are controlled but there's something predatory about it. Something that tells her he's crossing a line he swore he wouldn't cross.
He stops in front of her chair and looks down at her.
"You're more dangerous than I thought," he says quietly. "That's good. I need dangerous."
He reaches down and tilts her chin up so she's forced to meet his eyes. His hand is warm. His touch is gentle in a way that contradicts everything he is.
"Your father made a choice eight years ago," Dominic says. "He decided that his business interests were worth more than my father's life. He decided that removing a problem was worth the cost of blood."
His thumb brushes her jaw. The touch is barely there but it burns.
"And now you're making your choice," he continues. "You're deciding that destroying your father is worth more than protecting him. You're deciding that loyalty to blood means something different than loyalty to justice."
"Yes," Maya says.
"You understand what that means?" Dominic asks. "When this is over, when your father realizes what you've done, he won't forgive you. He'll see you as a traitor."
"He already did when he sold me," Maya says quietly.
Dominic's hand drops. He turns away and walks back to the window.
"Then we go to war together," he says. "And we burn everything he built."
Maya stands on shaking legs. She looks at the photographs again. She commits them to memory. The date. The names. The bodies. The families. She memorizes it all because she's going to use this. She's going to trace her father's money. She's going to find every person he's paid. She's going to help Dominic destroy the man who murdered his family.
And she's going to do it without hesitation.
"I need to know something," she says. "When you bought me at the auction, did you already know my father ordered the bombing?"
Dominic doesn't answer immediately.
"Yes," he finally says.
"And you still bought me anyway," Maya says. "You knew who I was. You knew what my father did. And you still paid two million dollars for his daughter."
"Yes," Dominic says again.
Maya understands what that means. He didn't buy her just to use her. He bought her knowing exactly how much she would cost him. Knowing that having her would complicate everything. Knowing that needing her would make him vulnerable.
He bought her anyway.
"You could have killed me," Maya says. "You could have used me as revenge against my father. Instead, you gave me a choice."
"Because," Dominic says, turning to face her, "I needed to know if you were capable of choosing something other than blood. I needed to know if you had the strength to stand against your own father. And now I know."
He walks toward her again. This time he doesn't stop until they're so close she can feel his warmth.
"Now we destroy him," Dominic whispers. "And when it's done, when everything he built is ashes, you're going to understand something your father never did. You're going to understand that loyalty to people who matter is more important than loyalty to blood. You're going to understand that choosing me means something."
"It means I'm betraying my family," Maya says.
"It means you're choosing a different kind of family," Dominic replies. "It means you're choosing me."