PROLOGUE:BEFORE THE STORM

The rain came down like secrets—soft, relentless, and impossible to ignore.

I stood in front of the mirror, smoothing the silk of my dress over trembling hands. It was my anniversary. Three years married. Seven years together. Over a decade of being hopelessly, stupidly in love with Xander Vale.

My lips curled into a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes.

“Happy anniversary,” I whispered to my reflection, like maybe she’d believe it more than I did.

Downstairs, the penthouse was lit in golden candlelight. I’d gone all out—his favorite dinner simmered in the oven, a bottle of the wine we drank on our honeymoon breathing on the table. The roses he used to buy me weekly now came from my own paycheck, but I didn’t mind. Love, real love, made sacrifices without a scoreboard.

I checked my phone again. No message. No "running late, babe." No "be there soon." Just silence.

I didn’t panic. Not yet. Xander was busy. Always had been. That’s what it meant to marry a man like him—a man who built empires before he was thirty and turned hearts to ash when he walked into a room.

And for a while, I was proud to be the woman beside him. The calm to his storm.

But lately, it felt like I was just another thing on his to-do list. And tonight... tonight felt like a test I hadn’t studied for.

I opened our messages. The last one was mine:

Can’t wait to see you tonight. Everything’s ready. I love you.

Left on read.

A ping of anxiety tapped at my ribs. I smothered it with logic. He's probably caught up in a meeting. Or traffic. Or both. I poured the wine, set the table, and reheated the food when it got cold. Twice.

By the time the clock hit eleven, the candles had melted into pools of wax and the wine sat untouched.

Still no Xander.

Still no message.

Just rain, hitting the windows like an accusation.

I sat down on the edge of our velvet couch, dress creased, lipstick faded, heart beating far too loudly in the silence.

When the elevator dinged at 11:17 PM, I jolted to my feet like a ghost hearing the sound of its own name.

The doors opened.

There he was.

Xander Vale.

Impeccable suit, the faintest trace of cologne, hair tousled like he’d been running his hands through it all night.

He stopped when he saw me.

His eyes flicked over the room, the candles, the untouched plates. Then to me—standing there like a broken promise.

“Hey,” he said, voice low, unreadable. No apology. Just that: Hey.

I tried to smile. Failed.

“You forgot,” I said quietly.

He stepped in, closing the door behind him with a soft click. “I didn’t forget. I just—things got out of hand. The meeting ran late.”

I waited for more. A kiss. An explanation. A flicker of remorse.

None came.

I nodded once, more to myself than to him. “I kept dinner warm.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I wanted to.”

He walked past me, loosened his tie, poured himself a glass of wine. Not the one I’d opened. A new bottle from the bar. He didn’t even notice the table. Didn’t see the gift I’d wrapped with a handwritten note tucked under the ribbon.

And in that moment, something cracked.

Not loud. Not obvious.

Just... cracked.

Xander leaned against the marble counter like he didn’t feel the weight in the room. Like he didn’t see me standing there in the dress he used to say made him forget how to breathe.

“Rough night?” I asked, keeping my tone light even though my hands were clenched at my sides.

His jaw tightened. “Something like that.”

I hated how that answer told me nothing and everything at the same time. He used to tell me everything—his dreams, his doubts, the stories behind his scars. Now I couldn’t even get a real sentence out of him.

I walked toward him, slowly. I still didn’t know what I wanted to say. I only knew I needed to be closer. To try.

“I waited,” I said softly. “I lit every damn candle in this place. I made your favorite meal. I wore this dress because I thought maybe you’d remember what tonight meant to us.”

He took a sip of wine. “I told you I had a long day, Raven.”

“You told me nothing, Xander.” The words burst out before I could reel them back in. “You don’t talk to me anymore. You don’t see me. And I don’t know when that started, but I do know that this—us—it’s disappearing.”

He stared into his glass. “Don’t do this tonight.”

“Do what? Be honest? Ask for a little piece of the man I married?”

Finally, finally, his eyes met mine. Cold. Tired. Sharp enough to slice.

“Raven,” he said, low and clipped, “you want honesty? Fine. I don’t know what we’re doing anymore either. Maybe we stopped being 'us' the moment you started needing more than I could give.”

I flinched. “I never asked you for anything you didn’t offer first.”

“I offered you the world,” he said. “But you started demanding my soul.”

“And you started keeping yours locked behind boardroom doors and late-night meetings!”

We were both breathing hard now. Years of held-back frustration rising like a tide.

His voice dropped. “Don’t stand there and act like you’re innocent in this.”

“I’m not. God, I know I’m not. But I never stopped trying. You did.”

Silence.

Sharp. Shattering.

I stepped back, suddenly exhausted.

“Tell me the truth, Xander,” I whispered. “Is there someone else?”

He blinked. Just once. But it was enough.

A pause. Too long. Too loud.

My blood turned to ice.

“There is,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said finally. “It just... did.”

The room tilted. The candles blurred into smears of light. My breath caught like glass in my throat.

“You cheated on me.”

He didn’t deny it.

“I was lonely,” he said. “You were always so... there. Watching. Waiting. Needing. And I—”

“—chose someone else.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “It didn’t mean anything.”

That was the part that broke me.

“Then why did you throw everything away for it?” My voice cracked. “Why didn’t you just come home? Talk to me? Love me?”

“I didn’t stop loving you,” he said. “But loving you stopped being enough.”

And that was when I knew.

This wasn’t a rough patch. This wasn’t a fight we’d recover from.

This was the end.

Or the beginning of it, at least.

He didn’t say sorry. He didn’t beg. He didn’t ask for forgiveness.

He just stood there, wine glass in hand, as I crumbled quietly on the inside.

I walked past him, grabbed my coat, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To remember who I was before you made me forget.”

The elevator ride down was a blur of steel and silence.

I didn’t cry. Not in the elevator. Not in the lobby. Not in the rain that greeted me like a long-lost friend. My tears had boundaries, and pride made damn sure they stayed inside—for now.

I walked for blocks in heels that weren’t made for distance. The city blurred around me—horns, lights, people rushing past. No one noticed the woman who’d just had her heart broken in the most casual, soul-splitting way imaginable.

When I finally stopped, it was in front of a 24-hour diner I used to love when I was still a nobody. When I used to dream about Xander from the window of my tiny studio apartment, wondering what it would feel like to belong to someone so powerful, so untouchable.

Now I knew.

It felt like suffocating inside a gilded cage.

I slid into a booth, shivering under the air conditioner that had no business being on this late in spring. A waitress handed me a menu. I ordered coffee I didn’t want and stared at the steam rising from the mug like it could give me answers.

How had we gotten here?

We were perfect, once. Not fairy tale perfect—messy, real perfect. We fought hard. Loved harder. Built everything from the ground up. We were supposed to be the couple that made it. That proved love didn’t have to die when ambition walked in.

I laughed bitterly into my cup.

Somewhere along the way, he stopped choosing me. And I just kept pretending I didn’t notice.

Because the truth? I wasn’t afraid of losing him.

I was afraid I wouldn’t survive it.

The coffee turned cold. My phone buzzed once.

Xander: Come home. We can talk.

I stared at the screen until the words bled together. Then I turned it over and pushed it to the edge of the table like it might burn me.

Come home.

As if it was still mine.

As if we still were.

I paid the bill and walked out into the early hours of morning. The rain had stopped, but the chill clung to my skin like memory.

When I got back to the penthouse, the candles were out. The wine glasses were gone. And Xander was asleep on the couch like nothing had happened.

I didn’t wake him.

I packed a bag—just a small one. Enough to remind him that I wasn’t bluffing. Enough to remind myself that I could walk away.

When I paused at the door, I looked back.

He didn’t stir.

Didn’t reach for me.

Didn’t whisper stay.

And that was the real heartbreak. Not the cheating. Not the distance.

It was the indifference.

It was realizing that love, when left untended, doesn’t explode.

It withers.

Quietly. Tragically. Permanently.

---

Six Months Later

The name on the door wasn’t mine anymore.

Raven Vale had died the day the ink dried on our divorce papers. The woman standing in the marble lobby of a billion-dollar firm wasn’t her. Not anymore.

Now, I was Raven Black—and I didn’t come back to make peace.

I came back to collect the pieces of the empire he thought I couldn’t build without him.

I came back for blood, reputation, and the power he thought I’d never learn to wield.

And I came back with one rule burned into my bones:

Don’t fall again. Especially not for him.

But when the elevator doors opened, and his name appeared on the screen across from mine in the merger file—

Vale Corporation.

—I knew one thing with terrifying clarity:

This story wasn’t over.

And Xander?

He was about to learn what happens when the woman you break comes back unbreakable.

"Let the games begin," I whispered, smiling as I walked into the boardroom. And on the other end of the table—Xander Vale smiled back.