DOMINIC'S POV
Three weeks into the partnership, Dominic realized he'd underestimated how easy it would be to break Sarah Chen.
She was at his office again, sitting across from his desk, sketching designs while he pretended to review contracts. He wasn't reviewing anything. He was watching her. The way her hand moved across the paper. The way her whole face changed when she had an idea. The way she looked at him like he'd hung the moon.
Every moment he spent with her was another thread in the trap.
He'd introduced her to his network. The best manufacturers. The biggest retailers. The investors who actually mattered. He'd positioned himself as the bridge between her dreams and reality, making sure she understood that none of this happened without him. That without his connections, she was still just a girl sleeping in her car.
She'd stopped saying no to him weeks ago.
"Come to the gala with me next month," he'd said last week, and she'd agreed immediately. Come to this meeting with my investors, he'd said, and she'd rearranged her entire schedule. Let me handle this supplier negotiation, he'd suggested, and she'd stepped back and let him take control.
She was cementing her dependence on him brick by brick.
The dangerous part was that Dominic had started to feel something he hadn't expected. When Sarah talked about changing the fashion industry, when her eyes lit up with that raw hope, something in his chest tightened. Something that felt almost like caring.
He pushed it away.
That was weakness. That was exactly what his father had warned him about. Feeling things made you vulnerable. Caring about people gave them power over you. Love was the cruelest weapon of all because it made people do stupid things.
Dominic had learned that lesson the hard way.
His phone rang that evening. His mother. He considered not answering but Victoria had a way of calling back until he did. He picked up on the third ring.
"Hello, Mother."
"Dominic." Her voice was careful. Worried. "I haven't heard from you in weeks. Are you well?"
"I'm fine. Busy with work."
"Your assistant mentioned you've been spending time with a designer from Brooklyn. A young woman."
Of course his assistant had mentioned it. Assistants talked. That was what they did.
"Her name is Sarah Chen. It's a business investment. Her sustainable fashion concept has potential."
There was a long pause. His mother knew him well enough to hear the lie, but she'd learned a long time ago not to push her son. She'd learned that lesson from his father. She'd learned it through years of watching her husband teach Dominic that kindness was a liability and cruelty was survival.
"Dominic, I need you to listen to me," she said quietly. "Whatever you're doing with this girl, I want you to think carefully about it. Your father taught you many things. Not all of them were right."
"She's not a girl, Mother. She's a business partner."
"Is she?" Victoria's voice cracked slightly. "Because I remember when you brought someone home once. A long time ago. Before you became like him. And I recognized something in your eyes then. The same thing that was in your father's eyes when he destroyed things he was afraid of."
Dominic hung up after that.
He didn't want to hear about his father. Didn't want to think about the man who'd built an empire on other people's pain. Didn't want to consider that maybe he was becoming something just as ruthless.
He was protecting himself. That was different.
Two days later, Sarah came to his office to sign the final partnership agreement.
She was nervous. He could tell by the way her hands shook when she held the pen. She flipped through the pages quickly, nodding at sections he'd explained to her. She trusted him enough not to read everything carefully. She trusted him enough to sign something without understanding every word.
That was what made it perfect.
Dominic had buried the real power in page twelve. A clause that seemed innocent at first. Standard partnership language. Growth targets. Performance metrics. But deeper in the paragraph, hidden in legal jargon designed to confuse, was the real clause. If Chen Designs failed to meet specific targets in the first year, Dominic had the right to acquire full ownership of the company. Complete control. Complete ownership. Everything Sarah had built would belong to him.
And he'd set the targets impossibly high.
She would fail. They both would know she was going to fail the moment she ran the numbers properly. But by then it would be too late. By then she'd already signed away her company.
"Don't you want to read it carefully?" he asked, testing her. Giving her one last chance to see the truth before she walked into the trap.
Sarah looked up at him and smiled. "I trust you."
Those three words. He felt them like a punch.
For just a moment, Dominic saw something in her face that reminded him of the person his mother had mentioned. Someone his father might have destroyed. Someone he was currently in the process of destroying.
He pushed the thought away.
"You should always read everything before you sign," he said, watching her. "Never trust anyone completely."
But she was already turning back to the agreement, flipping through the pages without really seeing them. When she got to page twelve, her eyes skimmed over the clauses. She didn't stop. She didn't read carefully. She didn't understand what she was signing away.
She just kept moving.
When she reached the last page, she looked up at him with absolute certainty in her eyes.
"I'm ready," she said.
Dominic held out a pen. The same pen his father had used to sign deals that destroyed people. The same pen that had built the Steele empire on suffering and fear.
Sarah took it and signed her name in careful letters.
Chen Designs was no longer hers.
She just didn't know it yet.
Dominic watched her sign the final page and felt something dark settle inside his chest. Satisfaction. Relief. The feeling of a trap closing perfectly.
She signed the last page and looked up at him with joy in her eyes. Pure, unguarded joy.
"We did it," she whispered. "We actually did it."
Dominic took the agreement from her hands and held it like it was a trophy. Because it was. Sarah Chen belonged to him now. Her company. Her dreams. Her future.
All of it was his to destroy.
"Yes," he said quietly, watching her face. "We did."
And somewhere deep inside, in the part of him that his mother had spoken to on the phone, something screamed. But Dominic had learned how to silence that part a long time ago.