Chapter 1 The Ring He Never Gave Her

The bedroom door was open. That was the first wrong thing.

Sebastian Blackwood stood on the threshold of the countryside cottage, one hand in his coat pocket, holding the black velvet box he'd carried for six hours and four hundred kilometers.

He'd imagined this moment a thousand ways on the drive up. None of them looked like this.

Victoria was naked and riding a man hard, giving him a wild cowgirl fuck.

Sebastian had blinked and prayed he was just hallucinating but the moment Victoria saw him in the doorway, she jumped off the guy's dick so fast the entire scene looked totally disgusting.

And that was when he realized he wasn't hallucinating. Far from it.

And when he looked harder at the person beneath her, he received his next blow to the gut. It was none other than Roman Sinclair. His worst enemy.

Roman Sinclair didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. Rather, he looked amused and smug, the way he always did when he'd taken something that used to belong to Sebastian.

This was perhaps the umpteenth time this sort of thing was happening.

But that was his least worry.

He stared at Victoria one last time.

This was supposed to be a woman he thought would become his wife before the month ended, and now all he saw was a joke. More like staring at the life he designed collapsing right before his eyes, without a hint or warning.

His hand closed around the ring box. He felt the seams of the small box bite into his palm.

"Sebastian," Victoria started.

He turned and walked out.

He wasn't ready to hear the usual storyline. It's not what you think, I can explain, blablabla.

His phone was already ringing by the time he reached the car.

Victoria.

But he ignored it.

He reached his car.

Slid into the black McLaren and flew.

The city travelled behind him in seconds. Speed limits were for men who hadn't just watched their supposed future wife get mounted by their worst enemy. He drove like the devil was chewing on his exhaust pipe.

And maybe he was. Maybe the devil was named Roman Sinclair.

His hands practically strangled the steering wheel.

He wanted distance. Miles of it.

And his mind, god, his mind wouldn't stop replaying the scene. Victoria's naked body on that bastard. Roman's triumphant grin. The rumbled sheets. The smell of him in her space.

The tires screamed against the driveway.

Sebastian hit the accelerator.

His phone began vibrating again.

He didn't need to look.

Victoria's sister.

He silenced that one too.

The next call was from his mother.

He let that ring out for a while, unanswered.

He had no interest in being managed right now. No interest in listening to his mother coming up with excuses to cover whatever he had just witnessed, or those usual lines of hers that families like theirs simply didn't let scandals like this see daylight.

He looked ahead and all he saw was regret.

For years, his mother Vanessa had begged him to settle down.

She had introduced him to countless women.

Beautiful women.

Educated women.

Women from powerful families.

Sebastian had rejected them all.

He felt he was still young and had never understood why everyone was so obsessed with marriage.

Then Victoria happened.

She was his mother's best friend's daughter.

And his mom adored her in a way that one would have thought she was her daughter instead.

Vanessa had spent three years steering him toward Victoria, the daughter of her closest friend. Victoria was elegant, accomplished, she was exactly the kind of woman photographed well beside a Blackwood.

But for a long time he'd resisted out of nothing more than stubbornness.

But somewhere along the line, he'd stopped resisting. He'd genuinely chosen her.

He was twenty six. His friends were getting married. Having kids. And personally he was tired of coming home to an empty penthouse. Especially when he was an only child and very introverted. So he had thought, foolishly, that Victoria could be peace.

Peace.

What a joke.

They had even started dating for a while.

Then he woke up one morning and thought of marriage. He had even told his mother about his intentions to marry Victoria.

His mother had nearly cried with happiness.

He chose the ring personally.

A flawless diamond surrounded by smaller gem stones.

He didn't tell Victoria or anyone outside his closest circle, except Clara Whitmore, Victoria's younger sister.

She had in fact become his accomplice, helping him arrange every detail.

And Clara Whitmore had said Victoria would love a proposal out here, away from the cameras and the calculating eyes of the city.

He'd believed her. He'd arranged everything, a small gathering of family a few miles out at the estate, a plan he'd turned over in his head with the same precision he brought to a nine figure acquisition.

The proposal would happen on the eve of Victoria's birthday.

It was meant to be a private and romantic arrangement.

Everything seemed perfect.

At least, that was the plan.

That morning, Sebastian stood inside the elevator of his penthouse, adjusting his cufflinks while his best friend Marcus watched him with an amused expression.

“You look nervous.”

Sebastian had given him a cold look and like a sick fool in love he had traveled all the way to the country side just to give Victoria a surprise proposal.

Instead, Sebastian had walked in on her with Roman Sinclair.

Roman?

Even after ten years, that name could make his blood boil.

He had never felt pain like this.

Not even when competitors had cost him millions or when he had lost deals worth fortunes just because Roman sabotaged it.

None of those things had cut this deep.

Because money could be recovered.

Companies could be rebuilt.

But trust?

Once it was destroyed, there was no amount of money in the world that could buy it back.

And the worst part was that Sebastian had trusted Victoria.

And for once in his adult life, marriage hadn't felt like a transaction dressed up as a relationship, it had felt like his personal decision.

That was what made this even more painful.

He should have suspected, he thought, gripping the wheel with anger in his blood. He should have suspected something fishy the moment Victoria's sister, Clara called him three days ago to tell him Victoria was visiting their grandmother in the countryside simply because she was missing the quiet of the hills.

But the thought that Victoria had actually traveled all the way down here. Just for this?

To cheat on him like this was unbelievable for a man with deep believe of sole devotion like him to process.

Perhaps she had chosen this place because she thought no one would ever know.

After all it was far away from him and everyone. Perfect cover up.

Perhaps this has been going on for a while before now.

Roman's face surfaced in his mind next, and with it, ten years of history he'd tried very hard to stop revisiting.

Himself and Roman Sinclair.

They'd been inseparable once. Two ambitious kids convinced they'd build empires side by side.

It's been ten years since the first betrayal. He could never forget that sweet faced beautiful girl he liked that year, her name was Lily, she had a beautiful smile like the wind.

And Sebastian had spent weeks working up the nerve to ask her out. He'd even bought flowers. He'd rehearsed lines. And three days before he could utter a word, Roman had swept in, charmed her, and had her in his bed by Friday.

Sebastian had confronted him then. Shared a beer with him and had even called him brother.

Roman had just shrugged. "You hesitated, Seb. I don't hesitate."

That was the day Sebastian learned the truth about Roman Sinclair. It wasn't about the girl. It was about the taking. The pattern that followed suit.

Sebastian could conclude that Sinclair Industries had been built on the bones of Blackwood's rejected scraps, stolen blueprints, sabotaged land bids, whispered boardroom betrayals. Every market Sebastian entered, Roman was already there, smiling like he'd been invited.

The whole pattern was starting to look as if Roman never truly wanted to build his own empire. He just wanted to tear down Sebastian's, brick by brick.

But Sebastian had never understood why.

He never understood why a person he had called a friend had wanted whatever was his.

And now he'd taken Victoria too.

Victoria?

A painful thought crossed his mind. Was he ever going to trust a woman again?

Maybe this was the proof he'd been avoiding, that marriage, the whole architecture of a shared life, wasn't built for a man like him.

It's official. Twenty six years old. CEO of a trillion dollar empire, now utterly and completely alone.

He grinds his teeth so hard it was a miracle they didn't break shatter. A scream gathered in his head. Was he cursed? Was every person he trusted destined to betray him? Did he have a neon sign on his back that read "Take whatever I have, I clearly don't deserve it"?

His phone buzzed endlessly in the passenger seat. Victoria's name flashed on the screen. Then Clara's. Then his mother's. He didn't look. He just drove.

His foot pressed harder. The speedometer kissed 180.

He replayed Victoria's bare back, then her face, the confusion, the horror. He replayed Roman's slack, satisfied mouth. He replayed ten years of stolen bids, stolen land, stolen life.

Then his vision blurred. He felt a drop of sweat roll into his eye.

He blinked.

And then suddenly, he felt a darkness moved in front of him.

Two shapes. One tall, one small.

Sebastian yanked the wheel.

Tires screeched against gravel. The car bucked, swerved, and then...

THUMP.

A sickening, wet crack against the chassis.

The McLaren fishtailed, caught a ditch, and slammed to a halt. The airbags deployed with a deafening pop, punching him in the chest. For a moment, there was only the hiss of steam and the tick tick sounds of cooling metal.

Sebastian's ears rang. He shoved the deflated bag aside, his ribs screaming in protest. He flung the door open and toppled out into the dirt road.

The headlights illuminated a nightmare.

An old man lay crumpled ten feet away, his legs bent at a wrong angle. His chest was barely moving. A dark pool was spreading beneath his head.

Several feet away, a girl. Young. Face down. Blood darkening the gravel beneath her temple.

Sebastian dropped to his knees beside her. Pressed two fingers to her neck.

A pulse. Weak. But definitely there.

She was alive.

He turned to the old man.

His eyes fluttered open. They looked glassy, like he wasn’t all the way there yet. Then he opened his mouth.

Sebastian leaned closer.

"My daughter..."

Sebastian Blackwood turned towards the girl's direction again and when he saw the nightmare before him, the weak old man in his own pool and that girl sprawled on the road like that, he realized that he had driven four hundred kilometres to give a woman a ring.

Instead he’d left two people standing in a graveyard of glass from the results of his uncontained anger.

He rushed back to the girl and gathered her in his arms helplessly as he looked around in absolute confusion.

Sebastian had no idea that the girl whose pulse fluttered under his fingers was about to become the only promise he would ever keep.