Chapter 1

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.

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