Chapter 14

The news came over breakfast—croissants, papaya slices, and black coffee with raw sugar. Sebastian had his laptop open, reading the early reports from his security division with that lethal stillness I’d come to recognize. It wasn’t rage. Not yet. It was the storm before.

“They breached the lower archive servers,” he said flatly, scrolling. “Anonymous credentials. Whoever it was knew exactly what they were looking for.”

I lowered my glass of mango juice, pulse steady. “Jacob?”

Sebastian glanced at me. His fingers paused over the keyboard.

“Most likely,” he said. “He’s been circling since Maui. And now he’s trying to make it personal.”

“Isn’t it already personal?”

His jaw flexed. “This isn’t just about you anymore, Pearl. This is about destroying me. He wants to tear down what I built and make it look like revenge for losing you. But he doesn’t have the reach, the brains, or the war chest.”

He closed the laptop, stood, and stepped to me with that calm fire behind his eyes. He slipped one arm around my waist, pulling me close.

“He’s a pathetic excuse for a man who only realized your worth when you were already mine. And I have no plans of giving you back to him.”

I smiled slow, silk-wrapped steel behind my eyes. “Good. Because I have no plans of going back to a narcissist who needed someone to love him more than he ever knew how to love back. I was foolish once, but I don’t repeat mistakes.”

Sebastian kissed my forehead, murmuring against my skin. “That’s my girl.”

My phone buzzed. I didn’t check it at first. I didn’t want to break the peace of his arms around me, but the second buzz came harder, longer.

I sighed and pulled it out. Lavenia. Of course.

I opened the message, and there she was—screaming in text.

“YOU BITCH. HOW DARE YOU STEAL JACOB FROM ME AGAIN? YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN A SNAKE. I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU KEEP PUSHING ME, I’LL EXPOSE EVERYTHING. YOUR ‘PERFECT IMAGE? I’LL BURN IT TO THE GROUND.”

I let out a soft laugh. Sebastian looked over my shoulder.

“She’s still alive?” he muttered.

I clicked call. It rang once. She picked up, already mid-rage. “You smug little whore—”

“Oh, Lavenia,” I cut in, smooth as silk. “Why don’t you go fuck Luther now? Isn’t that your specialty—sliding into bed with whoever’s still warm and bitter?”

She gasped.

I kept going, smiling as I stood and walked out onto the balcony, overlooking the private reef. “Or is it that you’re feeling insecure again? Because the girl you used to betray—the friend you thought no one would ever pick—happens to be the wife of Sebastian Montgomery.”

Silence.

I leaned against the glass rail. “Must sting, doesn’t it? All those years of whispering about me behind my back, only to watch the world hand me everything you wanted. And Lavenia? I’m having so much fun.”

I paused, smirked, then added like an afterthought, “Oh—and Jacob was here, by the way. Couldn’t keep away. Guess he’s still not over me. You two must be such a comfort to each other.”

Her scream crackled through the line before I hung up. I turned back into the villa, tossing my phone on the chaise.

Sebastian raised a brow. “Do I want to know what you said?”

I grinned, walking over and sinking onto his lap. “Not unless you want to be even more turned on than usual.”

He laughed, low and deep, brushing his lips against mine. “Careful, Mrs. Montgomery. You might start a war.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, eyes burning like diamonds. “Let them come. I have you. And I’m not afraid anymore.”

I stayed curled in Sebastian’s lap for a moment longer, my chin resting on his shoulder, his scent grounding me in the present. But my mind…my mind wandered where it shouldn’t.

The worst thing about surviving narcissists is how long it takes to stop gaslighting yourself after you’ve left…

Jacob Moreau. God, he was beautiful poison. The kind of man who gave you just enough to starve with hope. And I was so deeply, painfully in love with him. The kind of love where you’d rather bleed quietly than walk away.

I remembered sitting on the marble steps of his villa, makeup smudged, heart aching, and telling myself, it’s okay. He’s just flawed. He’s just hurt. He just needs time.

Even when I knew he was fucking Lavenia behind my back. Even when I walked into that room one night and saw them—Jacob, Lavenia, and Luther—twisted together in his penthouse suite like a scene out of some godless dream. Fucking.

I stood there. Frozen. The sheets were red silk, and the lights were low, and I remember thinking my stomach couldn’t possibly be turning that fast. But it was. I barely made it to the bathroom. I threw up everything—dignity included—and still told myself it was a nightmare. Just a hallucination.

Because if it was real…then everything I believed about love was a lie.

And Jacob…oh, Jacob played me like a cello. He always did. “You’re dramatic,” he’d say, “Why are you always so emotional?” The textbook narcissist. He’d cheat, lie, manipulate, and make me apologize for it.

And Lavenia? The manipulative little witch always playing the victim. Every time she messed up, Luther was there to clean up her mess. Always swooping in like some white knight when really, he was just another arrogant bastard who thought the world owed him something for existing.

Luther used to smirk at me like I was the one out of place. Like I was the extra body at their party of three. He once told me I was “too proper to keep a man like Jacob entertained.” And I believed that. For a while.

I believed I had to become someone else. Less soft. Less vulnerable. More hers.

I hated her. But worse—I envied her. That shameless confidence. That hunger for attention. That fake sugar-drenched voice that made men think she was some helpless little dove, when really she was the fox that got their wallets and their dicks in a chokehold.

I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth and sat up a little straighter in Sebastian’s arms.

He looked at me with concern. “What is it?”

I took a breath. “Just ghosts.”

He brushed a hand through my hair, tucking it behind my ear. “The kind we need to bury?”

I met his eyes. “Already dead. Just waiting for me to stop mourning the version of myself who thought she deserved men like them.”

He leaned in, his lips ghosting mine. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I know who you are now. And I know you’ll never go back to who they tried to make you.”

I kissed him back, soft and slow. Then I whispered, “And if they come for us again, I want to be the one who ends it.”

Sebastian smiled like a man who’d set entire kingdoms on fire. “Then we’ll do it your way, Mrs. Montgomery.”