Zack's POV
The girl looks so much like her mother.
The thought circles through my mind as I sit alone in my office, a glass of whiskey untouched on the desk before me.
The amber liquid catches the moonlight streaming through the window, and I should drink it—should drown whatever madness has taken root in my chest—but my hands won't cooperate.
Sleep is impossible. Every time I close my eyes, I see auburn hair tangled in my fingers, brown eyes blazing with defiance, the way she looked at me like she'd let me do every filthy thing I've imagined since she walked into my house and beg for more.
‘Give me something worth hating you for.’
I run a hand over my face, but the gesture does nothing to erase her voice from my memory. Nothing erases her. She's branded herself into my consciousness with the permanence of a scar, and I don't know how to cut her out without bleeding.
I know I've made a catastrophic mistake. She's grieving, vulnerable, technically family through the twisted branches of a tree neither of us chose to climb.
And I'm old enough to know better, wealthy enough to have alternatives, wise enough to recognize self-destruction when it's wearing auburn hair and my dead stepbrother's eyes.
Stephen's eyes. That's what stops me cold every time I look at her—the shape of them, the warmth, the stubborn set of her jaw that mirrors a man I spent decades resenting.
But her face belongs to someone else entirely.
My mind drifts backward, twenty-three years into the past, to a charity gala in Manhattan where I first saw Mara Sullivan glide across a ballroom floor like she was skating on air.
She wore a silver dress that night, simple and elegant, nothing like the sequined gowns the socialites favored. Her hair—the same auburn that haunts me now—fell in waves past her shoulders, and when she laughed at something her companion said, the sound made me forget how to breathe.
I crossed the room before I consciously decided to move. She turned, and those brown eyes met mine, and I understood in that moment what poets meant when they wrote about love at first sight.
"You're staring," she said, amusement curving her lips. "Is there something on my face, or are you always this intense with strangers?"
"Only the beautiful ones." The words left my mouth before I could consider whether they were too forward. "I'm Zack McKinney."
"I know who you are." She tilted her head, studying me with an assessment that felt more thorough than any business negotiation I'd survived. "You own half the restaurants in this city. The papers call you ruthless."
"The papers call me a lot of things. Most of them are true." I offered my hand. "And you're Mara Sullivan. Rising star of the American skating circuit. The papers call you graceful."
She took my hand, and the contact sent electricity racing up my arm. "Is that supposed to impress me? That you've read my press clippings?"
"I've done more than read them." I didn't release her hand, and she didn't pull away. "I watched your performance at nationals last month. The triple axel in your long program was flawless."
Her eyes widened slightly—genuine surprise breaking through her composure. "You follow figure skating?"
"I follow excellence." I smiled, and for once, the expression felt unforced. "In any form it takes."
We talked for hours that night. She told me about her training, her dreams of Olympic gold, the facility in Queens where she practiced six hours a day on ice that was never quite cold enough.
I told her about my restaurants, my investments, my complete inability to cook anything more complicated than toast.
"A restaurant empire built by a man who can't cook," she laughed, and the sound wrapped around my chest like a vice. "That's either brilliant or absurd."
"Most brilliant things are absurd when you look closely enough." I leaned toward her, close enough to catch the faint scent of her perfume—something floral and clean, nothing like the heavy designer fragrances the other women wore. "Have dinner with me."
"I don't date businessmen." But her smile softened the rejection. "They work too much and love too little."
"I'm not asking for love. Just dinner."
She studied me for a long moment, something shifting behind her eyes. "Ask me again sometime. When I'm not surrounded by people trying to impress each other with their checkbooks."
I sent flowers the next day. And the day after that. And every day for three weeks, until her training facility called to inform me that they were closing due to financial difficulties and would I please stop sending arrangements because they had nowhere to put them.
I bought the rink.
It took forty-eight hours to finalize the paperwork, another twelve to have my lawyers draw up the transfer documents.
I showed up at her practice the following morning, deed in hand, and found her gliding through a sequence so beautiful it made my chest ache.
She stopped when she saw me. Skated to the boards with wariness replacing the warmth I'd glimpsed at the gala.
"You bought my rink." Not a question. "The staff told me this morning. A mysterious benefactor saved our facility, and somehow I knew it would be you."
"It's yours." I held out the envelope. "The deed, the property, everything. Sign it over to yourself today if you want. I don't need it."
"Then why buy it?"
"Because you mentioned it was closing. Because—" I hesitated, the truth sitting heavy on my tongue. "Because you need it to train."
She didn't take the envelope. Her brown eyes searched my face, looking for something I wasn't sure I could provide.
"I met someone," she said quietly. "His name is Stephen. He's a skater—not a very good one, honestly, his crossovers are sloppy and he smiles too much for someone with such mediocre footwork." A soft laugh escaped her. "But he makes me happy."
I kept my expression neutral, years of boardroom negotiations serving me well. "And I don't?"
"You see a project, a conquest, a beautiful thing to acquire." Her voice was gentle, almost apologetic. "Stephen sees… just me. The scared parts and the messy parts."
"I could learn to see those parts too."
"Maybe." She reached out, touched my arm briefly. "But I don't want to be learned. I want to be known. There's a difference, Zack. I hope someday you understand it."
She chose love over luxury. Chose struggle over security. Chose a mediocre skater with a beautiful smile over a billionaire who would have given her the world. Imagine my face when I learned it was my beloved stepbrother.
I kept the rink. Rent it out now to figure skating programs across the state. A monument to my only rejection.
And now Mara's daughter sleeps down the hall, and I'm repeating history—wanting what I can't have, reaching for someone who should be off-limits.
The difference is that Ellie reached back.
I finish the whiskey in one burning swallow and stare at the ceiling. The truth I've been avoiding all night finally surfaces, impossible to deny any longer.
Having her here was always a mistake.
From the moment I saw her at that cemetery, looking lost and fierce and so heartbreakingly like her mother, I should have walked away. Should have wished her well and disappeared back into my billion-dollar life.
But I didn't.
I brought her into my home, into my family, into the orbit of my sons. And now I've touched her, tasted her, felt her body pressed against mine while she made sounds that will haunt me until I die.
I pour another whiskey. This one I drink slowly, letting the burn spread through my chest, hoping it will cauterize whatever wound she's opened.
It doesn't work.
Because the other truth—the one I can barely admit even in the privacy of my own mind—is equally undeniable.
Sending her away now would destroy me.
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