Derek Marville

I woke up with the metallic taste of a man who'd already lost before he even opened his eyes.

Forty-eight years old today.

The bedside clock read 5:47 AM. The left side of my king-size bed had been cold for exactly nine years, four months, and twelve days. Laura never came back to warm that space.

I dragged myself up, my body heavy as if I were carrying the entire Marville stock on my back. The bathroom mirror reflected a man the world feared — tall, broad-shouldered, silver threading through the hair at his temples, green eyes that always looked ready to kill. But I knew the truth. Inside, I was nothing but shattered glass.

The memory came uninvited. A cemetery under a thin rain. Me on my knees in the mud, expensive suit ruined, holding her ice-cold hand inside the coffin.

"Never again, Laura. I promise. I'll never touch another woman. Never love again."

Words from a thirty-nine-year-old widower who thought his heart had died along with her. I punched the tile. The sting in my knuckles hurt less than the memory.

At nine sharp, I walked into the boardroom on the top floor. Lawyers in gray suits, faces that had buried more secrets than people. The head of legal pushed a century-old document in my direction.

"The clause is clear, Mr. Marville. The acting CEO must produce a legitimate heir before his fiftieth birthday. Otherwise, leadership automatically passes to the next in the line of succession."

Next in line: Anthon and Alanis. My siblings, the twins. Two alcoholics who'd blow through a hundred-year empire on cheap champagne and cocaine before the month was out.

As if summoned by the devil himself, the doors burst open.

"Look at the king with no crown!" Anthon staggered in, a bottle of cheap vodka in his hand. "Happy forty-eight, bro. Time to find some whore to spread her legs, yeah? Otherwise we're taking this whole toy for ourselves."

He threw his arms wide, gesturing at everything in sight. Alanis let out a wet, grating, full-throated cackle.

"I can even hook you up with some girlfriends. Real cheap. They'll swallow anything — even their pride."

Blood pounded at my temples. The mahogany table trembled when I clenched my fists. A sharp crack echoed through the room — the wood splitting beneath my fingers. I wanted to snap their necks. I wanted to end this circus right now. But I couldn't. Not yet.

"Out." My voice came out so low the lawyers shrank back in their chairs. "Out of my office before I forget we share the same blood."

They laughed, but stumbled out. The smell of alcohol lingered in the air like an insult. I hated what money had done to those two.

I returned to my office. Passing through the anteroom, I spotted Clarissa — the secretary who'd been here six years, lipstick too red, skirts too short, glances too long. She flashed the smile that had disgusted me hundreds of times.

"Happy birthday, Mr. Marville… if you need anything to unwind after that meeting… I'm here just to serve you."

"You're fired. Security will escort you out."

Her smile died. I didn't care. I never wanted another woman looking at me like I was the answer.

Mason came in right after — eight months pregnant, folder in hand, the look of someone who'd already solved my life.

"Sir, I'm going on maternity leave next week. But I've already found the perfect replacement. Impeccable experience, discreet, extremely competent. She starts Monday. You'll approve."

I acknowledged her with a nod. Didn't ask for a name. Didn't care.

Night fell. The building emptied. I sat alone in my office in the half-light, just the golden desk lamp and a bottle of thirty-year cognac — the family's flagship, the same one my grandfather had bottled.

One finger. Two. Three.

I pulled her photo from the drawer. Laura smiling in Paris, twenty-nine years old, hair in the wind, eyes that made the world worth living in.

"I'm not losing all of this." I spoke to the nothing, to her, to the glass in my hand. "Even if I have to buy, steal, or impregnate the first woman who walks through that door."

The cognac burned my throat. The clock read 11:58 PM. In two years I'd turn fifty. The Marville empire would not fall into the hands of two drunks. I'd sworn never to love again. I hadn't sworn never to fuck.

I drained the rest in one go. The decision was made. Let the next woman who walked through that door come. She didn't know it yet, but she was already mine — to carry my heir.

My phone buzzed on the mahogany desk. Name on the screen: Victor Lang. I smiled. The rat had finally crawled out of his hole. I took the call and put it on speaker just to savor his desperation.

"Marville, you son of a bitch!" Lang's voice shook with rage and cheap whiskey. "You just bought the last distribution network I had left in the Northeast. How the hell did you do that in forty-eight hours?"

I swirled the cognac glass, watching the golden liquid spin like the market I'd just swallowed whole.

"Hello, Victor. Or rather — welcome to the end of your empire." I leaned back in my chair, feet on the century-old desk. "You wanted to play price wars, remember? Slashed Lang's Gold by twenty-five percent just to poach my premium cognac clients. Did you really think I'd let some second-rate Scotch nip at the heels of Marville 30 Years?"

Silence on the other end. I could hear his ego cracking.

"I had a verbal agreement with Freitas!" he shouted. "He swore he wouldn't sell!"

I chuckled — the kind of laugh that made the entire board shut up.

"A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it was never signed on, Victor. Last night I offered Freitas double what you were paying, plus ten percent of preferred shares in the new alcohol-free line I'm launching next year. He accepted before I finished the sentence. Smart man. He survives."

Something shattered on the other end of the line. Probably a bottle. The irony.

"You think this is over?" he snarled. "I still have the distilleries in the interior!"

"Had." I corrected him, pulling open the drawer and picking up the contract I'd signed exactly nineteen minutes ago. "I just closed with the bank that finances your distilleries. They preferred my lower interest rates and my personal guarantee. Tomorrow your stills become scrap metal or start producing the new Marville Reserve 18 Years. Pick your poison."

Dead silence. Then a choked sound, almost a sob.

"I'll destroy you, Marville. I swear to God I'll destroy you."

I leaned toward the phone, my voice low, almost tender.

"Victor, I already destroyed you. You just haven't gotten the invoice yet. And when you do, it'll come as a receipt with my name stamped on every bottle that was once yours."

I hung up before he could scream again. I looked at Laura's photo on the desk.

"Sorry about the language, love. Business is business."

I poured another finger of cognac and toasted her reflection in the crystal. In the spirits business, you're either the predator or you end up as a clearance-rack label. Victor Lang had just learned I never ran clearance sales.

I needed to find a woman willing to have my child. Because now it wasn't just about the empire. It was about legacy. And legacy demands blood. My blood. Running through the veins of a son who didn't even exist yet.

Damares Reese

I woke up to the slam of a fist pounding on my bedroom door. I could never really sleep past eight — they always jolted me awake like this between six and seven in the morning.

"Damares! Get out of that bed, you lazy slob! You look like a ball, you're so fat!" My mother's voice cut through the wood like a knife to my chest. "No man wants some depressed woman who can't even fit into her own clothes!"

I opened my eyes to the stained ceiling of the tiny ten-by-ten room where I still lived at twenty-six years old. The clock read 7:12. My stomach was already clenching before I even got up.

"Leave the girl alone, Marcia." My father's voice drifted from the hallway, dripping with fake pity. "Let her sleep. At least when she's sleeping, she isn't eating."

Laughter. The two of them laughing at me. Like always.

I lay there another minute, breathing deep, trying to remember the last time anyone in this house had said my name without spitting venom along with it. I couldn't.

I got up. The cold floor stung my feet. Walking down the hallway, I heard the rest:

"Look at the state of that girl, Marcia. Twenty-six and she looks forty. If she keeps this up, she'll die single and fat."

"She's gonna die of diabetes." My mother shot back. "Or shame. Just look at her — not even her hair can make her pretty with that full-moon face."

I made it to the kitchen trying to ignore them. Reached for a mug for coffee. My mother looked me up and down.

"You're really going to have coffee? Aren't you afraid of blowing out those pants? If you're gonna drink it, at least skip the sugar."

I swallowed hard. Put the mug back. Walked out without saying a word. I wished I still had the same body I'd had before I married my ex-husband. Marrying him had sent me into a spiral I never came back from.

"Eat whatever you want, babe." That's what he used to say. "I love you for who you are, not for your body."

What a fool I'd been.

In the bathroom, I locked the door and faced the mirror. Five foot three, two hundred and three pounds. Breasts too big for any department-store bra, wide hips, thighs that touched all the way down to my knees, a waist that still existed but nobody ever noticed because I buried it under oversized shirts.

I was beautiful. I knew I was. But I'd learned to hate every inch of myself because everyone else hated me first. The memory hit without warning, the way it always did.

Two years ago. Me coming home early from work. The bedroom door cracked open. Moaning — loud.

I walked in and saw my husband — ex-husband — with his back to me, fucking a girl who barely looked twenty-one. Skinny, gym-tanned skin, wasp waist, silicone tits, an ass sculpted by squats. She was on all fours on our bed, moaning loud, while he held up his phone recording.

"Yeah, you little slut, show the camera how tight you are…"

I froze in the doorway. He turned, saw me, didn't even flinch. Just smiled with contempt.

"Home early today, fatass. Wanna watch? This is what a real woman sounds like."

The woman — who I later found out was an Instagram influencer with a hundred and fifty thousand followers — turned her face, laughed, and said:

"Oh my God, babe, is that the whale you were putting up with? How did you fuck that without gagging?"

He laughed along. Kept pounding into her while staring me in the eyes. I stood there in complete shock.

"I used to pretend she was some hot skinny girl. But even that couldn't get me hard. She's flabby, saggy, she reeks. But you — you're firm, you smell good, you're sexy as hell. Look at the difference."

I cried. Of course I cried. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. When I came back, they were already dressed, taking selfies on the bed where I'd slept for five years.

"Just sign the damn divorce papers." He threw them in my face. "And lose some weight, would you? Maybe somebody'll take you as a pity fuck."

I left the house with one suitcase and a shattered heart. Went back to my parents' place because I had nowhere else to go. And here I was, two years later — fatter, sadder, more broken.

My phone buzzed in my pajama pocket. Name on the screen: Mason. I answered already smiling. She was the only person who still called me beautiful and actually meant it.

"Damares, for the love of God, save me!" Her voice was desperate and happy at the same time. "My boss needs someone he can trust to cover my maternity leave. Three months, maybe four. The salary's three times what you're making now. Three times. And it's at Marville Distilleries — the fancy cognac brand. I already told him about you and he's on board. Are you in? Please, girl, I don't trust anyone else to fill my spot!"

Three times the salary. Three times the chance to escape this prison of a house.

"I'm in," I answered without even thinking.

"Thank God!" she screamed. "Monday, nine sharp. Wear that tight black dress you've got — the one that makes you look like a plus-size Greek goddess. And red lipstick. You're gonna kill it."

I hung up the phone with my heart pounding hard for the first time in years.

I went to the closet and pulled out the black dress I hadn't worn since a cousin's wedding. Size 16, fitted, modest neckline in the front, but it hugged every curve like it had been tailor-made. I held it up against my body and looked in the mirror.

I was beautiful.

I was smart.

I was strong as hell.

On Sunday, I spent the whole day washing my hair, deep conditioning, shaving every last inch, painting my nails scarlet red. When my mother walked into my room that night and saw the dress laid out on the bed, she hit me with the classic:

"You're wearing that? You're gonna look like a sausage in a skirt."

I smiled. For the first time in years, a real smile.

"Yes, Mom. And tomorrow I'm walking out of this house so I never have to hear you call me fat again."

She opened her mouth to fire back. I shut the door in her face.

I lay in bed with my heart racing. Tomorrow was the start of a new life. Tomorrow I'd walk into Marville Distilleries headquarters as my best friend's temporary replacement. Tomorrow no one was going to humiliate me anymore.

I wasn't going to let other people tell me what to do. I was going to prove my worth.

Damares Reese

Damares Reese

I arrived at Marville Distilleries headquarters thirteen minutes early. The smoked-glass building reflected the gray morning sky like some kind of luxury monster.

A doorman in white gloves held the door open with a "good morning, miss" that sounded more expensive than my parents' entire monthly rent.

The lobby looked like a palace — Italian marble floors, a crystal chandelier that probably cost as much as a car, and the subtle scent of aged oak drifting from the private elevators.

I rode up to the top floor with my heart in my throat. The receptionist, a blonde in flawless attire, sized me up from head to toe but smiled with measured politeness.

"Ms. Reese? Mr. Marville is expecting you."

She led me down a hallway where every painting on the walls was worth more than I'd ever have in my life. The office door was solid wood, no nameplate. She knocked twice and opened it.

"Go right in. Good luck."

I stepped inside and the door clicked shut behind me — a soft sound that felt like a warning of things to come. I ignored it. I needed this job.

The office was massive, all dark grays and aged gold. A mahogany desk that looked centuries old dominated the center. Behind it, a floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooked the entire city below, as if the man who owned the place watched the world from above and decided who lived or died.

I sat in the leather chair facing the desk. My black dress rode up a little on my thighs when I crossed my legs. I tugged it down as best I could. The silence was so thick I could hear my own blood pumping.

The door opened again, no knock this time. He walked in. Derek Marville in the flesh — bone, muscle, and pure danger.

Six foot four of raw power. A navy suit cut to perfection, white shirt open at the first button, revealing the edge of a chest that had nothing in common with your average executive — he had tattoos.

Dark hair threaded with silver at the temples, which only made him more dangerous. Green eyes so light they looked carved from ice. He closed the door with a slow, deliberate motion, like someone caging its prey.

He didn't say a word. Just stared at me. Feet to face. Slowly. As if he were peeling off every piece of clothing with his eyes.

The air left my lungs. My dress suddenly felt too small. My breasts pressed heavy against the fabric. My thighs squeezed together on their own.

He circled the desk, steps sure and steady on the Persian rug. Stopped behind his chair. Planted his hands on the backrest and leaned forward. His scent hit me before his voice did — wood, expensive cognac, and something darker, more masculine. Then the voice came, low, rough, almost a growl:

"Do you have a boyfriend, Ms. Reese?"

I swallowed hard. The question caught me so off guard I nearly stammered. But I lifted my chin.

"No. And I don't plan on having one anytime soon."

He smiled. A half-smile that didn't reach his eyes but made my stomach flip.

"Good."

He picked up a thick contract bound in black leather and pushed it toward me. Over fifty pages. I couldn't even make out the title properly.

"Sign here." He pointed to the last page, a Montblanc pen already waiting beside it.

"But... I haven't even read—"

"HR closes in eight minutes — the team has fire drill training today." He cut me off, voice firm but still low. "If you want the job, sign now. You can read it at home later."

My heart raced. Three times the salary. Getting out of that house. Proving I was worth something. The pen weighed in my hand like it was made of lead.

I signed. Damares Reese. Steady letters, even though my hand was shaking on the inside.

He took the contract back, studied it calmly, slid it into a black folder, and locked it in the drawer. The click of the lock sounded final. He stood. Circled the desk again. Stopped right behind me. I didn't dare move an inch.

Derek leaned in. The heat of his body burned against the back of my neck. I felt his nose graze — barely, almost imperceptibly — the curve of my throat. He inhaled deep. Like he was breathing me in.

A violent shiver ran down my spine. My nipples hardened against my bra. My thighs pressed together even tighter.

"Welcome to Marville, Damares." His voice was a hot whisper against my ear. "Starting tomorrow... you're all mine."

I froze. Every inch of my body broke out in goosebumps like I'd been hit by lightning. He pulled back slowly, returned to his side of the desk, and sat down as if nothing had happened. I stood up on legs that felt like jelly. The door seemed miles away.

"See you tomorrow, Ms. Reese," he said, his eyes never leaving me.

"S-see you tomorrow... Mr. Marville."

I stumbled out. The hallway seemed to spin. It wasn't until I stepped into the elevator that I could breathe again.

"What the hell just happened?" I whispered to myself. "And why — even though I'm terrified — is my entire body still on fire?"

I stepped out of the elevator and crossed the marble lobby on legs that were still trembling. The cold air conditioning hit my flushed face, but there was still a stubborn heat between my thighs, a pulse I couldn't ignore.

That man had looked at me like he'd already fucked me on top of that desk. And the worst part — a piece of me had wanted him to. Right there on the sidewalk, my phone buzzed.

"Girl! How'd it go?!" Mason's cheerful voice exploded in my ear.

"It was... weird as hell." My voice came out hoarse. "But I got the job."

"I knew it! He's intense, right? Don't worry, that's just how he is. You start tomorrow?"

"I do. Mason... I can't spend another night at my parents' house. I can't take it anymore. I'm gonna lose it today."

She went quiet for two seconds on the other end.

"My old apartment's still empty, Dama. I was gonna rent it out next month, but it's yours. Furnished, clean, key's with Mr. Ewan, the doorman. Pay the first month's rent when you get your paycheck — no rush. It's small... bedroom with a bathroom, open-concept kitchen and living room, and a tiny balcony that fits a little table and two chairs. Perfect for starting over."

Hot tears welled up in my eyes.

"You're saving me, girl. Seriously."

"I'll see you tomorrow at the office — I've still gotta fill you in on a few things. Go grab the key, I'll let Ewan know, and sleep there tonight. New life, new Damares."

I hung up and ran for the subway. The ride to Mason's old building seemed to fly by. She'd really left the key with the doorman.

Back at my parents' place, I opened the door with the spare key and immediately ran into the usual duo.

"Look, it's Ellie from Ice Age's cousin, back from her 'job.'" My father mocked from the couch, beer in hand. "You really thought you'd land a real job dressed like a gas tank in a black skirt?"

My mother followed me to the bedroom, and when she saw me pulling out my suitcases, she hissed:

"You're actually leaving? You'll starve on your own, sweetheart. But at least you'll lose weight, right? Maybe then you'll amount to something."

I took a deep breath. Grabbed the suitcases I'd had packed since yesterday.

"I'm leaving. Right now. And I'm never listening to this shit from you two again."

"You'll starve!" they shouted together as I slammed the door.

In the taxi, my heart was pounding so hard it hurt. I arrived at Mason's old building downtown. Ewan, the doorman, greeted me with a wide smile.

"Ms. Mason let me know you're the new tenant — she stopped by so quick earlier I barely got a word in. Welcome!"

I ran up the four flights of stairs. Opened the door to 403.

The apartment was small, simple, perfect. Cold tile floors, a gray two-seater couch, a dining table that doubled as a desk, an open kitchen with a brand-new stove.

Bedroom with a double bed and a nightstand, bathroom with a glass-enclosed shower, and on the little balcony, two iron chairs and a partial view of the lit-up avenue. I let the suitcases drop to the floor, threw open the window, and whispered to the world outside:

"I did it! I did it!"

I turned on the shower, peeled off the black dress that still carried that man's scent, stepped under the hot water, and cried — from relief, from rage, from happiness.

New home. New job. New salary. New life.

Tomorrow I'd walk into that office again. Tomorrow I'd face Derek Marville with my head held high. And whatever came next — bring it on.

I wasn't the Damares who settled for scraps anymore. Starting today, I was taking what was mine.