Isla's POV

The gate code hasn't changed.

I sit with the rental idling at the entrance to Damien Blackwood's Hamptons house, my thumb hovering over the keypad instead of the call button, and some reckless, humiliating part of me is almost disappointed when the numbers I once knew by heart still work. The gate groans open like it's been waiting. A year of silence, and he never bothered to lock me out. I tell myself that means nothing. Men like Damien don't sentimentalize old codes. He simply never thought of me enough to change it.

That's the story I decide to believe, because the alternative that some part of him left the door open on purpose is more than I can carry right now.

I ease the sedan around the curve of the driveway, past the house itself, and park in the shade of the willow tree I used to sit under with a book I never actually read, too busy watching him work through the glass doors. My hands don't leave the wheel right away. My pulse is doing something violent and unfamiliar, hammering so hard I can feel it behind my eyes. I came all this way. I am not turning this car around in his own driveway like a coward.

I loop my bag across my body, tuck it against my hip, and force myself out into the wind.

October off the Atlantic has teeth. It grabs a fistful of my hair the second I step clear of the car, and I curl deeper into my sweater, the collar doing nothing against the cold biting at my throat. Salt rides the air, sharp and familiar, and underneath it, unmistakably, the ghost of this place of ours, of a version of me that used to belong here without asking permission. I hate how fast it comes back. I hate that a smell can undo a year of work.

I am over him. I've said it enough times that it should be true by now.

I climb the front steps two at a time before I lose my nerve, past the same wood siding, the same three peaked rooflines cutting into the gray sky. This house used to be Raymond's before it was Damien's, before a heart gave out on a golf course and left his son everything, including this place, including me though I didn't stay to be inherited along with the rest of it. Raymond had impeccable taste. He'd have hated that I'm standing here shaking.

My hand lifts toward the bell and then simply doesn't finish the motion.

It's the memories that stop me, arriving all at once and without permission the shouting, the door I slammed, the version of myself that cried in a rental car two blocks from a church because I couldn't make myself go inside a funeral home to say the thing I actually meant. There was more good than bad here, though, and that's the part that guts me. The way he used to look at me like I was the only fixed point in a very large, very loud world. None of it changes what came after. None of it changes why I left.

I should have called first. I should have done a lot of things differently.

I turn to retreat down the stairs, already composing the apology I'll leave on his voicemail, when an engine snarls up the drive behind me, that particular arrogant growl I would know blindfolded, in a coma, from the other side of the world. The Porsche. Of course it's the Porsche. He brakes hard enough that gravel sprays, and I freeze on the bottom step like I've been caught somewhere I shouldn't be, which, in fairness, I have.

I brace myself the way you'd brace for a wave you know is going to be bigger than you.

I'm not the woman who used to live here. I've spent a year turning myself into someone harder to break.

The door pops open before the engine's even fully silent. He unfolds out of the driver's seat the way he does everything unhurried, certain, like the world will simply rearrange itself around his timeline. Six-three of him, dark hair pushed around by the wind in that same careless wave my hands used to get lost in. Jeans, a black shirt that has no business fitting him that well, and thirty-eight looking every bit as devastating on him as thirty-four did the year I walked into his chest in a hallway and never fully walked back out.

He crosses the distance between us without rushing, and somehow that's worse than if he'd sprinted. Predators don't need to hurry.

He stops close. Too close. Close enough that I catalog the new gray threading through his goatee before I can stop myself, close enough that I have to tip my chin to hold his stare, and when our eyes finally lock, something in my ribs simply gives out.

"Isla." Just my name, low, and it lands somewhere under my sternum like a hand pressed flat.

"Damien." It shouldn't feel like anything to say. It feels like everything.

"I didn't expect you." A beat. "Ever." The temperature in his voice drops ten degrees on that last word, and it lands exactly where he means it to.

I'm a courtroom animal. I know how to hold a line under pressure. So I hate myself for how fast that line collapses. "This was a mistake," I say instead, already pivoting past him. "Forget I came."

His hand closes around my arm before I clear the second step, and heat rockets straight up to my shoulder, down through my chest, settling somewhere I refuse to acknowledge out loud.

"We've made a lot of mistakes, you and I," he says. "I'd rather you not add running away twice in one visit to the list."

He's not wrong, which is somehow the most infuriating part. I can't think in complete sentences when his hand is on me. I never could. "Please don't touch me," I manage, barely above a whisper.

He lets go like my skin scalds him funny, considering who actually did the burning between us and something shutters behind his eyes. "Inside," he says, already turning.

I follow, because some traitorous, permanent part of me will always follow this man. I open my mouth to say his name again, unsure what's supposed to come after it, but he's already moving, already expecting me to fall into step, and I do, because apparently a year hasn't taught me anything new about how to say no to him.

We climb together, matched stride for stride, and he doesn't walk ahead of me the way another man might, doesn't make a display of ownership. That's not how he plays it. He never needed to walk in front to be in control of the room. I understood that once and mistook it for equality. It wasn't. It was never that. I only ever thought I held my own ground with Damien Blackwood. The truth is he simply let me believe it, right up until the day he didn't.

He reaches the door first and pushes it open, and against every instruction I've given myself in the past three hundred and sixty-some days, I look at him one more time before I cross the threshold. His eyes catch mine, and that's all it takes one look, and I'm exactly as lost as I swore I'd never let myself be again.

I hate him.

I have never stopped loving him.

Both are true at once, the way they always have been, and I walk into his house carrying both like stones in my pockets, telling myself I can still turn back even as the door closes behind me.

Isla's POV

My first day ends with my head still spinning somewhere over Midtown.

The scale of this place is nothing like the cramped, fluorescent-lit office I came from. Blackwood isn't just a law firm anymore, not really. It's a machine with tentacles reaching into real estate, private equity, hospitality, half a dozen industries that have nothing to do with a courtroom, and every single one of those tentacles apparently traces back to one man. The son. The heir. I've been here eight hours and I've already gathered that Damien Blackwood doesn't just want a seat at the table, he wants to own the building the table sits in, and from what I can tell, he's most of the way there.

It's dizzying in the best possible way. I spent years watching doors close on me because I couldn't afford full-time tuition, because I had to claw my law degree out in pieces at night while working days, because the small firm that finally hired me had a ceiling I could touch with my hand flat against it. This glass tower, this scale, this opportunity feels like the first real crack of daylight I've seen in a decade. If I do this right, I don't just build a career. I pull my father out of the version of Brooklyn that's been slowly grinding him down since Mom died.

I step off the elevator already three moves ahead, running through the case file I picked up this afternoon, mapping out exactly how I'm going to make myself useful to the partner I've been assigned to instead of just decorative. I need wins. I need my own file of them, the way I built one at my last firm, brick by brick, until nobody could pretend I hadn't earned my seat.

I'm so deep in strategy that I don't see the wall of a man until I've already hit it.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry " The words come out in a rush as two hands land on my shoulders, steadying me, and my own palms have somehow ended up flat against a chest wrapped in what is unmistakably a very, very expensive suit. I look up to apologize properly and lose the thread entirely.

Green eyes. Not just green, a shade that seems lit from somewhere behind them. The rest of him is doing something equally unfair to my composure.

"Nothing to apologize for," he says, and his voice does something low and private, like he's decided I'm the only person in this lobby worth using that tone on. "Honestly, you might be the single good thing that's happened to me today."

I have no idea what to do with a sentence like that. "I don't really know how to respond to that."

Someone clears his throat off to the man's right, and only then do I register that he isn't alone. Two other men in equally sharp suits are flanking him, waiting. "We'll catch up with you upstairs," one of them says, and the stranger doesn't so much as glance their way. His attention stays locked on me like I'm the only variable in the room worth tracking. The two men peel off toward the elevators.

"Have a drink with me," he says. Not a question. More like a decision he's already made on my behalf, delivered with just enough charm that I don't immediately bristle at the presumption. He's older than me, mid-thirties, maybe and he wears his confidence the way other people wear cologne, like it's simply part of him. Whoever he is, he doesn't answer to anyone in this building. I can feel the way you feel the weather changing.

"You haven't told me your name."

The corner of his mouth curves, slow and entirely too satisfied with itself. "You'll have it tonight if you show up. Morrell's, eight o'clock. Consider it payment for the collision. I'll cover the wine." His thumb grazes my cheekbone, brief and startling. "For the record, your eyes are ridiculous."

And then he's simply gone, leaving me rooted to the marble floor with my pulse doing something entirely inappropriate for a Tuesday.

By the time I make it to the subway, I've talked myself in and out of going roughly four times. He could work for Blackwood. He probably works for Blackwood. Is there a rule against this? I don't even know the handbook yet. I haven't let myself want anything this simple in over a year. I've been too busy surviving to have a type, let alone act on one but there was something about the certainty in him, the way he seemed to already know exactly who he was without needing anyone's permission to be it. I want to stand closer to that kind of certainty, just for one glass of wine, just to see if some of it rubs off.

Damien's POV

I'm halfway through clearing my desk with exactly one thing occupying real estate in my head. A pair of blue eyes I collided with an hour ago when Eric lets himself in without knocking, sleeves shoved up over the ink he's never once apologized for. My father can't stand the tattoos. I've always seen them differently: six years of Team Six carved into skin, paired with a Harvard mind that treats spreadsheets like poetry. Add in the fact that he's the only person in this building who tells me the truth even when it costs him something, and you get the one man I actually trust without reservation.

"Your father's on a tear downstairs," he says, dropping into the chair across from me. "Furious about everything, as usual."

"Furious usually means the next quarter runs cleaner."

"That's exactly the kind of sentence that makes people afraid of you." He slides a folder across the desk. "Atlanta numbers. They're solid. I'd move on."

"Then move on."

"After you've actually looked. That's the deal we catch different things on the page, always. I'm not signing until I know what you see that I don't."

I nod, filing it away for the morning, and he doesn't let the subject change fast enough. "You're seeing her tonight."

"I am."

"New associate."

I lift a brow. "You ran her already."

"You're the heir to a company worth more than most small nations, and you just cornered a woman in the lobby like a civilian. Of course I ran her."

"With your help," I remind him, "we built most of that worth from nothing much at all. For me that's proving I earned what my father handed me. For you it's a very expensive middle finger to yours."

"And I intend to keep earning it." He taps the desk. "I emailed you her file. Full workup."

"I'm not opening it." I stand, already moving toward the door. "Whatever I need to know, I'll learn from her directly." I'd already guessed she might be one of ours. It's exactly why I picked a bar three blocks from my apartment instead of anywhere near the office.

"For what it's worth," Eric calls after me, "on paper, she reads like one of two things. The best decision you'll ever make, or the worst."

I pause at the door. "Sounds like every good story starts that way." I leave before he can argue, and I don't glance at that email once. There's something about her I don't want filtered through a background check before I've earned it honestly. I want the version she gives me herself.

The car is waiting downstairs, and ten minutes later I'm handing my briefcase to Nix outside my building, tipping him enough to guarantee it reaches my apartment untouched. Five years of loyalty earns that kind of trust from me. It's the only currency that actually matters to me at this point in my life.

Morrell's is dim and intimate in low light, a triangular bar, booths tucked along the walls for people who want to disappear. I don't do booths. I take the bar, the seat that lets me see the whole room, because control isn't a preference for me, it's closer to a requirement. My whiskey is already waiting by the time I place a private order, more money than the bottle probably justifies, though I've never once regretted the extravagance.

She walks in before I've taken my first sip, still in the navy dress from this afternoon, the one with the zipper that teases down the front just enough to have occupied far too much of my attention earlier. I noticed that. I also noticed the small freckle at the corner of her eye, which I have no business remembering this clearly. She scans the room, fingers curling faintly against her palms nervous and when she finds me, she takes a breath I can read from across the bar. Good. Nerves mean this matters to her.

She crosses toward me and I let myself watch every step of it, the sway, the length of her, the quiet confidence underneath the nerves. I want her under me before the night is through. I want to know exactly what she is beneath the composed exterior, and I intend to find out, though I'm careful I have a great deal riding on discretion, and she works too close to my world for careless mistakes. She stops beside my stool.

"Hi."

"Hi." Charming. Unguarded in a way few women manage around me anymore, and sharp underneath it I can see the intelligence sitting right behind her eyes. "Glad you came."

She doesn't sit. "I almost didn't."

"Why's that?"

"Because I have too much riding on this job to gamble with it. I need to know why you were in the Blackwood lobby before I decide whether to sit down."

"Does the answer change anything?"

"It's my first week. I don't want to break a rule I don't know exists yet."

I respect honesty, expect it, the way my father always has, even when it's inconvenient. She's earning points fast. Still my name tends to reveal things about people they didn't know were there.

I rise, hands settling at her waist, and turn her until her back meets the bar, my body effectively boxing her in without force. "I appreciate the instinct to follow rules. Blackwood doesn't ban relationships between colleagues. I've never believed you can put people together seventy hours a week and expect nothing human to happen. I only require that it's handled with discretion, and disclosed properly."

She blinks. "Do you believe and require? Who exactly are you?"

"What's your name first?"

"Isla," she says, and true to the lawyer she's clearly becoming, circles straight back. "You still haven't"

"Damien."

Her eyes widened. "Damien as in"

"Blackwood," I finished for her.

The color drains slightly from her face. "You let me stand here without telling me that?"

"Would it have changed anything?"

"Of course it would have. I'm not interested in climbing anything by climbing you."

I laugh, genuinely, for the first time all day. "Is that right?"

"It is. Now let me off this bar. I need to go. Please, Damien Mr. Blackwood"

I turn us so we're side by side instead, freeing her, though my hands stay at her waist and hers remain pressed to my chest not nearly where I'd prefer them. "Damien," I correct. "I can't stand Mr. Blackwood. And I don't want you leaving, Isla. You have my attention, genuinely, and I'd like to know if that's mutual, separate from anything to do with my name."

"It is. Was. I just don't know how to separate the two anymore."

"I'm just a man."

"A billionaire."

"A man who wants to actually know you. I can promise this changes nothing about your position here, but walking out that door right now would change something else entirely." I release her waist, though our legs stay touching, her palms still resting against me.

"I'm fairly confused right now." She leans back slightly, hands sliding away, though she doesn't step back. "I wanted to know you, or I wouldn't have shown up. But now that I know who you are, I need a minute to think."

"I can work with that. Give me your phone. Put my number in it. The next move is entirely yours."

"You're my boss."

"Not directly. Phone."

She hesitates just long enough that I feel it, then hands it over. It rings mid-transfer Dad flashing across the screen and she declines it fast. "Sorry."

"You could have answered. Fathers matter."

She studies me, something shifting behind her eyes. "You're close with yours?"

"Very. As I was with my mother, before I lost her."

A pause, careful, like she's deciding whether to hand me something fragile. "I lost mine last year. It's still hard on my dad."

"Mine hasn't fully recovered either," I admit, more honestly than I planned to. "You should call him back. Don't let him worry."

"I will, in a minute. He knows my hours are brutal. That's actually what you need to understand before I leave this bar. I don't work like this because I want to. I work like this because I have to. I turned down two Ivy League offers because I couldn't swing the tuition without going part-time, put in two years at a firm that barely paid me anything just to prove I could win cases, and I finally got here. I can win for you. I won't be the associate who becomes a cautionary tale in this industry."

I let that settle. She could be angling for something plenty are but there's no performance in her voice, no calculation. She's not trying to keep me. If anything, she's trying to talk herself out of me, and I have no intention of letting that stand. Her phone is still in my hand; I finished entering my number and haven't returned it yet. "I don't date or sleep with anyone on my payroll."

"Then why bring me here?"

"Because you've become considerably more interesting in the last five minutes." I cup her jaw. "I'm about to kiss you, unless you tell me not to."

"I really shouldn't let you."

"That's not a no, Isla."

"I know," she breathes, and I close the distance, and the second I taste her, I already know one glass of wine and one kiss are never going to be enough. She makes a small, helpless sound against my mouth, leans in rather than away, and I force myself to pull back before I lose what little restraint I'm holding onto. I press her phone back into her palm.

"You have my number now. Use it whenever you're ready. But understand this first next time I kiss you, I'm not stopping.”