DOMINIC'S POV
When Sarah burst through his office door, Dominic forgot how to breathe.
She was furious. She was breaking apart. She was the most real thing that had ever existed in the same room as him, and she was shattering because of his hands.
For a moment, he couldn't hide it. His face showed everything. The shock of seeing her pain. The dangerous feeling rising in his chest that felt almost like regret. The sudden understanding that he'd made a mistake so catastrophic that no amount of money could fix it.
Then he built the walls back up.
"Sarah," he said, standing up like they were colleagues discussing a failed project. "This is unexpected."
But it wasn't. He'd known she would come. He'd been waiting for it. Wanting it. The confrontation was part of the destruction. Part of proving to himself that he was strong enough to watch her suffer and feel nothing.
Except he felt everything.
"You destroyed me," she said, and her voice cracked on each word like glass breaking.
Dominic looked at her shaking hands. At the tears she was fighting. At the complete and total devastation in her eyes. And he felt that dangerous thing again. That almost-regret. That whisper of humanity trying to claw its way out from under seventeen years of armor.
He pushed it down.
"I bought your company," he said, making his voice cold. Making it empty. Making it sound like her pain was just a business transaction. "That's what partners do."
"You lied to me." Her voice was getting smaller. Quieter. Like she was drowning and going under. "You set us up to fail. You pretended to believe in me."
"Yes. I did." He said it like an admission of nothing. Like stating a fact about the weather.
Her eyes widened. Like she'd expected him to deny it. Like the truth was somehow worse than a lie because lies at least meant he was afraid of something. The truth meant he didn't care.
"Why?" She was barely breathing the word.
Dominic felt something splinter inside his chest.
He should have just said nothing. Should have let her leave with her question unanswered. But something in her face made him cruel. Made him need to justify himself. Made him need to explain why destroying her was actually destroying himself.
"Because you were naive," he said, turning back to his desk. Making a performance out of his indifference. "Because you believed in things. Because you thought kindness mattered and that dreams were real. And I needed to prove to myself that people like you don't survive in the real world."
Each word was another hammer blow.
"You believed the world could be better," he continued, not looking at her, pulling papers in front of him like she was already irrelevant. "That was weakness. That was naive. And I was right to destroy it."
He heard her sharp intake of breath. Heard the sound of her breaking.
"You destroyed my dream," she whispered.
"Yes," he said without looking up. "I did. The deal is done, Sarah. There's nothing you can do about it. You can leave now."
He kept his eyes on the papers in front of him. Didn't watch her move toward the door. Didn't let himself see the moment she left. Didn't acknowledge that he'd just destroyed the only thing that made him feel human.
When his office door closed behind her, the silence was absolute.
Dominic sat alone at his desk in his fifty-second-floor office and felt the weight of what he'd done settle into his bones. The acquisition was complete. Chen Designs was his. Her sketches were his. Her vision was his. Everything she'd built with her own hands now belonged to him to do whatever he wanted with.
He felt nothing.
That was the problem.
He should have felt triumphant. He'd accomplished exactly what he set out to do. He'd proven to himself that he was strong enough to destroy someone and walk away without flinching. He'd proven that he didn't need weakness. That he didn't need her. That he was exactly like his father and that was a good thing.
So why did his chest feel like it was caving in?
Dominic stood up and walked to the window. The city was spread below him like a kingdom he'd conquered. Millions of people living their lives. Building things. Loving things. Believing in things. And he stood above them all, alone in his tower, untouchable and empty.
He thought about Sarah in her warehouse. Thought about her hands moving as she sketched. Thought about the way her entire face transformed when she talked about sustainable fashion like it was religion. Thought about three months of watching her believe in him while he planned her destruction.
He thought about the moment he'd realized his biggest mistake was letting her matter.
Dominic pulled out his phone.
He hadn't called his mother in four years. Not since his father died. Not since Victoria had stopped trying to save him and accepted that the Steele men were cursed to become monsters. She'd given up on him. He'd given up on himself.
His thumb hovered over her contact.
The phone rang before he could talk himself out of it.
Victoria answered on the first ring.
"Dominic," she said, and her voice sounded like she'd been sitting by the phone waiting for this call. Like she'd known he would break eventually. Like she'd been patient enough to wait for the moment when the weight of his own cruelty finally became too heavy to carry alone.
"Mother," he said, and his voice didn't sound like his own. It sounded young. Broken. Human.
"What's wrong?" She asked it like she already knew. Like mothers know their children even when their children have become strangers to themselves.
Dominic opened his mouth and couldn't speak.
"Tell me," Victoria said softly. "Tell me what you've done."