Part 2: He slapped his wife for another woman on their fifth anniversary, and by sunrise she had taken the one thing his power could never bring back.

In the executive penthouse office of Caruso Design Group on Madison Avenue, glass shattered against the wall.

Dominic slammed his heavy crystal tumbler onto the mahogany desk, shards spraying across the quarterly earnings reports.

"What do you mean we can't file an injunction?!" Dominic roared at his chief legal counsel, a pale man named Harris whose collar was soaked in nervous sweat.

"Sir, Judge Martinez refused to sign the temporary restraining order," Harris stammered, wiping his brow with a trembling handkerchief. "She... she has the original sealed state archive filing from 2020. The signature on the assignment clause wasn't hers—it was your corporate secretary’s proxy signature. Without Nora's personal countersignature, CDG doesn't own the silk algorithm. Technically, we've been manufacturing without a license for eighteen months."

"Then find a loophole!" Dominic barked, his face pale, dark circles bruising his eyes. "I pay your firm four million a year to eliminate loopholes!"

The door to the private office swung open, and Vanessa Sterling slipped inside. She was dressed in an understated cream cashmere sweater, looking soft, vulnerable, and completely innocent.

"Dominic," she purred, walking behind his leather executive chair and placing her manicured hands onto his tense shoulders. "Darling, don't let her destroy everything you’ve built. She’s doing this out of jealousy. She knew my talent would overshadow her old, dusty sketches."

Dominic didn't lean back into her touch. For the first time in six months, her voice grated against his eardrums like sandpaper.

"Jealousy?" Dominic turned his head slowly, looking at Vanessa. "She took the patent, Vanessa. The patent you swore you developed in your Paris studio."

Vanessa’s eyes flickered with a microsecond of panic, quickly smoothed over by practiced hurt. "I told you, I was inspired by the Vance archive! Designers draw inspiration from historical houses all the time—"

"You told me it was your original geometry," Dominic interrupted, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper. "You looked me in the eye three months ago and said you had the proprietary weave formulas. That's why I paid you a quarter of a million out of my private fund."

"Dominic, I love you!" Vanessa dropped to her knees beside his chair, taking his right hand—the hand that had struck Nora—and pressing it to her cheek. "Nora never appreciated you. She didn't want you to succeed. Look how quickly she turned on you! Look how she humiliated you with the press! She doesn't care about your family name. I do."

Dominic stared down at her.

Suddenly, the ballroom memory replayed in his mind, sharp and stripped of the alcohol-fueled haze of last night.

He had walked into the VIP lounge behind the stage to find Vanessa crying, her dress strap torn, claiming Nora had attacked her. He had seen Nora standing there, silent, holding the sketch booklet. He had lost his temper, terrified of a public PR disaster on the biggest night of his career, and he had swung his hand.

The crack of skin on skin echoed in his head.

The look in Nora’s eyes hadn't been anger. It hadn't been shock.

It had been absolute, final emancipation.

Dominic pulled his hand away from Vanessa’s grasp.

"Julian," Dominic said into the desk intercom, not breaking eye contact with the kneeling woman.

The heavy office door clicked open immediately. Julian stood in the entrance.

"Get the internal security footage from the St. Regis VIP lounge last night," Dominic ordered. "The raw, unedited feed from camera four."

Vanessa turned white as chalk. "Dominic... you don't need to do that. You trust me, don't you?"