Pampered By The Possessive Wall Street Titan

The burning suffocation vanished.

Cold leather replaced the scorching heat. Ansley's fingers gripped the steering wheel. She gasped.

The smell of smoke was gone. Damp, freezing air filled her lungs. It smelled like rain and wet asphalt.

Her vision blurred, then snapped into focus. Wiper blades slashed frantically across the windshield. Beyond the glass, a pitch-black road stretched out. Rain hammered the metal roof.

She glanced down. The digital speedometer glowed red. Ninety miles per hour.

She turned her head. A white tulle veil lay on the passenger seat. The silk fabric gleamed in the dashboard light.

The memory hit her. The yacht. The fire. The locked door. His face through the flames, screaming her name as he burned. And now, this. The night she ran away from her wedding.

But the fire was only the end of the story. The beginning had started years earlier—the day her parents brought Heidi home. A golden-haired orphan with a smile that made everyone forget the daughter who had been there first. At eight years old, Ansley watched her mother brush Heidi's hair with a tenderness she had never felt herself. At nine, she watched her father lift Heidi onto his shoulders at the Fourth of July parade while Ansley walked behind them, holding her own hand because no one had reached for hers. At ten, she stopped waiting. At eleven, she stopped hoping. At twelve, she stopped believing that the word "daughter" meant anything at all. Ansley had been eight years old when she learned that love wasn't a birthright. It was a competition. And she was losing.

By fourteen, she had been shipped off to a Texas farm—exiled, they called it, for her "difficult temperament"—while Heidi stayed behind, filling her place at the dinner table, at family photos, at the center of every Christmas card. The last thing Ansley saw as the car pulled away was Heidi standing on the front steps, waving goodbye with a smile that was meant to look sad but couldn't quite hide the triumph underneath. She had won. The real daughter was gone. The adopted one had the kingdom to herself.

Ten years later, they had summoned her back for one reason only: to marry a man she didn't know. A business transaction in a white dress. Not a single phone call in ten years. Not a birthday card. Not a Christmas gift. And then, one day, a lawyer's letter demanding her presence at a wedding she had never agreed to. Her father hadn't even signed the letter himself. His assistant had done it.

The invisible steel wire. It was strung across the blind curve ahead.

Less than two hundred feet remained. Her pupils contracted.

Her right foot slammed off the gas pedal. She stomped the brake to the floor.

The silver Porsche fishtailed. Tires shrieked against the slick, wet tarmac. The chassis violently swung sideways.

Ansley gripped the wheel. She counter-steered. Her knuckles turned white.

The car skidded. It stopped. The front bumper hovered ten inches from the reflective guardrail posts.

She slumped back against the leather seat. Sweat soaked her skin. Her chest heaved.

She pushed the driver's side door open. Cold rain instantly drenched her silk dress.

She stumbled out. Her bare feet hit the wet pavement. She walked to the front of the car.

The headlights illuminated the space between the guardrails. A razor-thin steel wire stretched taut across the road. Neck height. Exactly neck height.

If she hadn't braked, that wire would have sliced through the windshield. It would have taken her head off.

She stood there in the rain, staring at her own murder weapon. In her past life, she had died burning. In this one, someone had tried to behead her. Two deaths. Two murder attempts. And both of them orchestrated by people who smiled at her across the dinner table. The irony was almost exhausting.

In the rearview mirror, blinding high beams flashed. Two shafts of light tore through the rain.

A black, armored Maybach roared closer. It slammed on its brakes right behind her Porsche.

The Maybach's door was shoved open. A tall figure stepped out into the storm.

Elon Vaughn wore a black bespoke suit. His tie was loosened. His eyes were dark, wild, and completely unhinged.

He strode toward Ansley. His leather shoes splashed through the puddles.

He grabbed her wrist. His grip was brutal. It felt like he was going to crush her bones.

"Are you trying to kill yourself to get away from me?" he snarled. "Answer me!"

The rage in his voice was volcanic, but beneath it—raw, bleeding terror. She recognized it instantly. The same terror she had heard in her past life when he found her trapped behind that locked door. The terror of a man who had already watched her die once and couldn't survive watching it again.

Ansley looked up. She stared at the face of the man who had burned to death trying to save her in her past life. The only person in two lifetimes who had ever come for her. The only person who had ever chosen her first. Her eyes reddened.

In her last life, she had screamed at him. Fought him. Called him a monster. Tonight, she did something he had never experienced in all the years he had known her.

She didn't fight him. She didn't scream. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.

Elon's entire body went rigid. His hands froze in mid-air. The rest of his threat died in his throat. He stared down at the top of her head as if she had just performed an impossible magic trick.

"What—" his voice cracked. "What are you doing?"

She buried her face in his soaked chest. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Her voice shook. "I'm sorry for everything."

She was apologizing for a lifetime he didn't remember. For the screaming. For the fighting. For the years she had spent pushing him away while he burned—literally burned—trying to reach her.

Elon looked down. He stared at the trembling woman in his arms. Pure shock crossed his face. His hands, still suspended in the air, slowly—almost fearfully—lowered onto her back. He held her like she might shatter.

"You've never apologized to me," he said hoarsely. "Not once. In three years."

"I know," she whispered. "I know what I've been. What I did to you. I remember everything now." She didn't explain what "everything" meant. She couldn't. Not yet. But she needed him to know that something had changed. That she had changed.

In the distance, the faint hum of another engine cut through the storm. Ansley knew that sound. Jaydin was coming to check if she was dead.

Ansley lifted her head. The vulnerability vanished from her eyes, replaced by something cold and lethal. She grabbed Elon's hand and pointed toward the front of the Porsche.

"Someone set a trap to kill me," she said. "And I know exactly who sent them."