CHAPTER 2: THE REVELATION

Sienna's POV

I folded my hands on my hips, wondering at the audacity of this man. The way he sat there like he knew everything about me. Like he had studied my life and found it entertaining.

"Well I know many things," Sebastian said, standing up from his desk. "Why do you think he never publicized the relationship?"

"What do you know?" I asked, getting impatient and at the same time, getting interested. Despite everything screaming at me to walk away, I needed to hear what he had to say. I needed to understand why Dominic had hidden me.

"Dominic Castellano is a man who wouldn't risk his image on a girl he thinks is not worth his caliber," Sebastian replied.

The words hit differently. I squinted my eyes at him, trying to read between the lines. Something wasn't adding up. He was holding back. There was more to this, and I could feel it.

Then it struck me. What he had said at the very beginning of this conversation.

"You said you were there on the night my parents died," I said, my voice steady now. "How do you expect me to believe that? I was told they had an accident."

"You believe what you were told," he cut in, his voice sharp. "But not what you've seen and looked into. Your parents and mine, with Dominic Castellano's parents, were business partners. This was something between your parents and mine."

He paused, and something flashed across his expression. A moment of genuine emotion that didn't belong on the face of someone so controlled. He tapped his fingers on the desk, the sound echoing in the quiet office.

I was impatient. I had never cared much about what happened to my parents since I was taken to the orphanage at six years old. But now, standing here, listening to this man speak about them like they had mattered, like their deaths had meant something, everything inside me wanted to know more.

"It has been a traumatizing one for me as a Teenager," Sebastian continued, and his voice was different now. Quieter. More real. "Our car was directly behind your parents' when a truck smashed into them. You know the rest."

I closed my eyes and flipped them open. The office seemed to tilt around me. In the space of three days, my entire world had been turned upside down. Dominic had humiliated me. I had lost my job. And now this man was telling me that my parents' death wasn't an accident.

"So why are you telling me?" I asked. "What does it have to do with the proposition you offered?"

He sipped his wine slowly, deliberately, like he was savoring it. Like he was savoring this moment.

"Dominic's family was responsible for your parents' accident," he said. "They killed your parents."

The words should have meant something. They should have devastated me. But I was already so broken that adding one more crack hardly seemed to matter. Except it did. It mattered more than anything.

I was dumbfounded. Unable to move. Unable to process.

"What... what do you mean?" I whispered.

"Dominic knows you before you became his secret girlfriend," Sebastian said, his eyes locked on mine. "He targeted you. He follows his father's rules. Now you can see a relation to why he never wanted to make the relationship public. Because he is using you at his own will. Because your parents' death connects to you, and he wanted to make sure you never found out."

The anger came first. Hot. Blinding. Consuming.

Then the fury. Deep and primal and all-consuming.

The man I thought I loved. The man I had given three years of my life to. The man whose body I knew better than my own. He had targeted me. He had used me. He had slept with me while his family's hands were covered in my parents' blood.

He had the effrontery to touch me. To call me his. To throw me away like I was nothing.

And his parents. His father. They had killed the only people in this world who might have cared about me. They had murdered them and gotten away with it. And Dominic had known. He had always known.

The intercom on his desk buzzed to life.

"Sir, it's time for the press conference," his assistant's voice came through.

"Oh yeah," Sebastian said, standing up. He removed his suit jacket from the rack and put it on with practiced ease. He looked at me, his expression unreadable.

"Think about it, Sienna," he said. "Think about what Dominic and his family had done to you. When you are ready, sign the papers."

He said it like it was a simple choice. Like signing my life away to a stranger was just something I should do while I processed the fact that the man I loved had murdered my parents. Or at least, that his family had.

He brushed past me, his assistant following behind. The office suddenly felt enormous. Empty. Cold.

I stood there alone, surrounded by expensive furniture and the weight of the truth. My hands were shaking. My heart was racing. Tears were building in my eyes, threatening to spill over, but I held them back. I held everything back.

I had nothing else to lose. Everything I was scared of losing was when I thought I loved Dominic. But right now, in this moment, that fear was gone. Replaced by something darker. Something more dangerous.

Revenge.

I bent down and grabbed a pen from his desk. My hand was steady as I picked up the contract. The papers were thick. Legal. Binding. They laid out everything. One year as Sebastian Ashford's wife on paper. One year of helping him with whatever he needed. One year of my life in exchange for the tools to destroy Dominic Castellano.

I didn't read the fine print. I didn't care about the details. I just signed my name on every line that needed it. Sienna Rossi. Over and over again. Binding myself to a stranger and to revenge in one fluid motion.

Then I stood up and walked out of the office.

The hallway was quiet. The elevator was humming softly. Sebastian was standing in front of it, talking with his secretary about some meeting later in the day. He looked calm. Collected. Like he hadn't just upended my entire existence.

I walked up beside him, my heart pounding in my chest so hard I was sure everyone could hear it.

"What is the next thing on ground?" I asked.

He turned to look at me, and something flickered in his expression. Recognition. Respect. Possession.

I stretched the signed documents toward him, holding them up to his face.

He looked at the papers, then at me. A smirk crossed his face, slow and satisfied.

"Atta girl," he said.

His secretary excused herself, sensing the shift in energy between us. The elevator doors opened, and we both stepped inside.

I stared at my reflection in the polished metal doors and barely recognized the person looking back at me. My eyes were hard. My jaw was set. I looked like someone capable of destruction. Someone willing to do whatever it took to win.

I would use him. His resources. His power. His connections. Everything I could grasp onto to make Dominic Castellano regret every single moment he had spent with me. To make him understand what it felt like to lose everything.

To make him suffer like he had made me suffer.

He had no idea what was coming.

He had no idea that I had just signed away a year of my life to destroy him.

He had no idea that the girl he had broken was about to become his worst nightmare.

And I was ready.