Second Chance Betrayal: A Billionaire’s Sinful Reunion

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.”