Auctioned for a Dollar, Claimed by the Billionaire Chapter 13

For six weeks, nothing happened.

That was the scariest part.

I threw myself into work. I cleaned house at Sterling Group. Every executive Ryan had planted got escorted out with a cardboard box. The board members who had once whispered “Sterling heifer” behind my back now stood up when I walked into meetings and called me Ms. Sterling.

And I built something new. Sterling Atelier. My jewelry line, under my father’s name.

Damien was everywhere and nowhere. He never crowded me. He just appeared. Lunch on my desk at one o’clock when I forgot to eat. A driver waiting outside at midnight when I stayed late. An iced oat latte, light ice, every single

morning.

He still hadn’t kissed me again.

“You’re waiting for something,” I told him one night.

“I’m waiting for you,” he said simply.

Launch night came on the first snow of December. The Sterling Atelier debut, in the glass atrium of Sterling Tower. Five hundred guests. Every fashion editor in New York.

The centerpiece of the collection was a necklace called Lot 13. Thirteen teardrop sapphires on a platinum chain, set around one stone in the center. My mother’s.

When I walked onto the stage to present it, the room rose to its feet.

I saw Damien in the front row, clapping slowly, looking at me like I was the only light in the building.

I didn’t see Ryan until it was almost too late.

He came out of the catering corridor in a stolen server’s jacket. Thinner. Unshaven. His eyes were huge and empty. He

had a broken champagne bottle in his hand, the glass jagged and gleaming.

“You took EVERYTHING!” he screamed.

He lunged up the stage steps at me.

I couldn’t move. My feet were frozen to the floor.

Then a dark shape crashed into him from the side.

Damien.

They hit the stage floor together. The bottle flashed. I heard fabric rip. Damien grunted. Then security was on top of Ryan, slamming him face-down, prying the glass from his fingers while he howled my name.

“Damien!”

I dropped to my knees beside him. His sleeve was soaked red from the elbow down. There was a long gash across his

forearm.

“I’m fine,” he said through his teeth. He looked at me. Only me. “Are you hurt? Ava. Look at me. Did he touch you?”

“You idiot,” I choked. “You’re the one bleeding.”

They arrested Ryan for the second time in three months. This time, the judge revoked his bail on the spot. Assault with

a deadly weapon. Attempted murder. He wasn’t going anywhere for a very long time.

The anonymous party who had posted his bail turned out to be Sloane’s father, hoping Ryan would keep her name out

of the trial. Two days later, the DA charged him too.

That night, Damien sat on my couch with fourteen stitches in his arm, refusing pain pills, pretending it didn’t hurt.

I sat beside him and opened a small cardboard box.

Band-Aids. The cheap kind. With cartoon stars.

I had bought them from a vending machine in a hospital hallway.

He stared at the box. Then at me. Something in his face broke wide open.

I peeled one off and pressed it gently, crookedly, on the small scrape near his temple.

“This is my city,” I whispered. “Nobody touches you anymore. I’ve got your back.”

He made a sound low in his throat. He took my face in both hands and kissed me. Not like the gala. Not for a camera.

Slow and deep and shaking, like a man finally letting himself have the thing he’d wanted his entire life.

When we broke apart, he rested his forehead against mine.

“There’s something in my safe,” he said roughly. “I’ve kept it for fifteen years. I was waiting for the right moment.”

My heart pounded. “And?”

His thumb traced the scar through my eyebrow.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you.”