Chapter 1
Sophia slapped a stack of photos across my face.
“You’ve got the nerve, Elena.”
The pictures scattered across the floor, every single one sharp and damning.
Me and Vincent in his study.
Holding each other. Kissing. even one of him gently straightening my collar, his side profile soft with a tenderness that made my chest tighten.
My stomach turned without warning.
I clamped a hand over my mouth and rushed to the bathroom, dry-heaving over the sink.
Sophia leaned against the doorway, watching me with cold amusement.
“What is it? Pregnant?”
The mockery in her voice was colder than ice water.
“My son’s, or his father’s?”
I rinsed my mouth and lifted my bloodshot eyes to hers.
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re disgusting.”
Her heels clicked against the marble as she walked toward me, slow and deliberate, looking down at me she was born above me.
“You really think you can tie Vincent down with a baby?”
“Elena, you’re so naive.”
“Vincent and I may be divorced, but what we had over twenty years of marriage is more than trash like you could ever compete with.”
“He’s just playing with you. Men are men. Who’s going to turn down a young girl throwing herself at him?”
“But the title of Donna of the Johnson family?”
She smiled, cruel and thin.
“You don’t deserve it.”
I braced both hands against the sink and forced myself upright.
“Whether I deserve it or not isn’t up to you.”
Sophia pulled another piece of paper from her purse and tossed it at my feet like I was something beneath her.
A check.
“Five million dollars. Take the money. Leave the Johnson family. Get rid of the bastard in your belly.”
“Otherwise, these photos will be on Leon’s desk tomorrow morning.”
Leon, my husband in name, Sophia and Vincent’s only son.
A boy they had protected too well, wild, proud, and heartbreakingly naive.
He loved me with everything he had.
If he saw those photos, it would destroy him.
“How dare you!” My hands curled into fists.
Her smile deepened, but never touched her eyes.
“Try me.”
“I’m giving you three days to think.”
“Don’t force me to be the one who destroys the marriage my son cherished with everything he had.”
She turned and walked away, leaving behind the mess and one last icy warning.
“Elena, don’t forget.”
“You’re still the Johnson family’s daughter-in-law.”
“Don’t get greedy.”
The second she was gone, I collapsed onto the freezing bathroom floor, a chill spreading through my whole body.
The nausea rolled through me in waves.
I couldn’t tell if it was morning sickness or if Sophia simply made me sick.
My name is Elena.
And from the day I entered the Johnson family business as one of Vincent’s trusted people, my heart had belonged to him.
Vincent.
The Don of the Johnson family.
A man thirty years older than me.
Mature. Controlled. Unreadable.
His blue eyes carried the depth of a man who had seen too much and survived it all.
He was ruthless in family business. Untouchable.
There was something lethal about him.
Something magnetic.
Like a bottomless whirlpool I’d thrown myself into willingly.
I knew how forbidden this love was—how twisted, how absurd.
He was my Don. My superior. An elder. A man so far out of reach.
But I wanted to drag the moon out of the sky and make it mine.
I found out he and his ex-wife, Sophia, had divorced peacefully years ago.
Their only son, Leon, was studying in Italy.
So I started engineering every “accidental” encounter with Vincent.
When I delivered papers, my fingertips would graze the back of his hand.
In the break room, I’d pretend to lose my balance and fall into his arms.
At business dinners, I’d drink a little too much and make him take me home.
But he was always calm.
Always composed.
He’d steady me out of pure courtesy, then put distance between us immediately.
His gaze was cool and flat, like he was looking at an immature girl who didn’t know her place.
Every hint. Every temptation.
A joke in front of him.
He was so cold it barely felt like a normal man.
I refused to give up.
So I turned my attention to the son who was about to return to America.
Leon.
Vincent’s only weakness.
And the only way in.
