Chapter 2

Clara POV:

Three years later. Shanghai.

"Ms. Chen, the Ashford Group's delegation has arrived. Conference room B."

My assistant, Lena, said it like she was announcing the weather. She didn't know. No one at Chen Industries knew that the name Ashford was a knife I had spent three years learning to hold by the handle instead of the blade.

I checked my reflection in the glass wall of my corner office. The woman staring back was unrecognizable from the girl who had bled on a bathroom floor.

That girl had been soft. Hopeful. Stupid enough to believe a man who whispered "forever" while texting his mistress under the dinner table.

This woman wore a black Valentino suit that cost more than Dominic's car. Her hair was pulled back in a severe knot. Her eyes were steady, calculating, empty of anything as wasteful as emotion.

I had spent three years building this version of myself. After the divorce, I had returned to my family—the Chens, one of the wealthiest dynasties in Asia, the identity I had hidden when I married Dominic because I wanted to be loved for myself, not my net worth.

My grandfather had taken one look at me—hollowed out, twenty pounds underweight, with the dead eyes of a woman who had lost everything—and said nothing. He simply handed me a seat at the board table and pointed me toward the company's most failing division.

"Fix it," he said. "And fix yourself."

I did both.

In three years, I had turned a bleeding division into the company's most profitable arm. I had closed deals that made front-page news. I had earned my place, not through my name, but through a relentless, almost frightening competence that left no room for grief.

The grief was still there, of course. It lived in the empty space below my ribs, the place where a heartbeat had once flickered on an ultrasound screen before going silent. I just didn't let it breathe.

Now, Dominic Ashford's company was drowning. Bad investments, a scandal involving his father, and a market downturn had brought the Ashford Group to its knees. They needed a partnership with Chen Industries to survive. They needed me.

The irony was so sharp it could cut glass.

"Send them in," I said.

The conference room doors opened. Four men in expensive suits filed in, their smiles practiced, their handshakes eager. They were desperate. I could smell it—the sour, metallic scent of men who were about to lose everything.

And then he walked in.

Dominic Ashford.

Three years had changed him. He was leaner, the boyish softness in his jaw replaced by hard, angular lines. His eyes were darker, shadowed by something I might have called suffering if I believed he was capable of it.

He was still devastatingly handsome. The kind of handsome that had once made my heart stutter and my common sense evaporate.

Now, looking at him, I felt nothing. A vast, Arctic nothing.

He extended his hand. "Ms. Chen. Thank you for taking this meeting. Your reputation precedes you."

His voice. God, his voice. The same low, velvet baritone that had whispered lies against my skin.

I took his hand. His grip was firm, warm. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"Have we met?" he asked, his brow furrowing slightly. "You seem... familiar."

My heart rate didn't change. My smile didn't waver. Three years of practice had made me bulletproof.

"I don't think so, Mr. Ashford," I said, my voice cool and professional. "I would remember."

I released his hand and gestured to the conference table. "Shall we discuss how I'm going to save your company?"

He sat down across from me, and for the next two hours, I dismantled his proposal piece by piece. I pointed out every flaw, every overvaluation, every desperate attempt to hide the rot beneath the surface. I was surgical. Merciless.

His team squirmed. Dominic's jaw tightened with each correction, his pride visibly cracking under the weight of his need.

By the end, I had restructured the entire deal in my favor. Chen Industries would acquire a controlling interest. The Ashford family would retain a minority share—and their dignity, barely.

"These are my terms," I said, sliding the contract across the table. "Non-negotiable."

Dominic stared at the document, his face a mask of barely controlled frustration. He was a man used to being in control, and I had just taken it from him completely.

He looked up at me, his dark eyes searching my face with an intensity that sent a whisper of the old fear through me. But I held his gaze, steady and unblinking.

"You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Chen," he said.

"I drive the only bargain, Mr. Ashford," I replied. "Take it or leave it."

He signed.

As his pen scratched across the paper, I felt a dark, quiet satisfaction bloom in my chest. He had just signed his company over to the woman he'd thrown away.

And as his delegation filed out, Dominic paused at the door. He turned back to me, that furrow still creasing his brow.

"I'm certain we've met," he said softly. "Your eyes. I know your eyes."

My blood chilled. But my face remained porcelain-still.

"Perhaps in another life, Mr. Ashford," I said.

He left. The door closed.

I sat down, alone in the conference room, and pressed my hands flat against the cold table until they stopped shaking.

He was close. Too close to remembering.

And I wasn't done with him yet.