POV: Spencer
The sharp, sterile smell of antiseptic in the corporate medical lounge was suffocating, but I barely noticed it.
I sat on the edge of the examination table, my jaw tight as the company medic carefully peeled away the ruined, soaked fabric of my dress shirt. The skin on my right forearm was blistered and an angry, raw red.
Every time the medic dabbed the burn ointment onto my flesh, a searing pain shot up my arm.
But compared to the dark, violent thrill currently thrumming through my veins, the physical agony was absolutely nothing.
I looked down.
Brooke was sitting on the small stool right beside me. She was utterly silent, her face pale, her beautiful eyes fixed on my wound. But for the first time in five years, she wasn't looking at me with that impenetrable wall of ice and defense. For the first time since she woke up in that hospital, she had willingly grabbed my arm and walked by my side.
Grant, you absolute fool, I thought, a twisted, triumphant sneer curling in my mind as I looked at her soft profile.
He had spent five grueling years melting the ice around Brooke’s heart, building an impenetrable fortress of a marriage. And today, with a single cup of boiling water and his own arrogant, amnesic pride, he had taken a sledgehammer and smashed it all to pieces. He had practically gift-wrapped my woman and handed her right back to me.
The medic wrapped the white gauze around my arm, the silence in the room pulling my mind backward, plunging me into a memory I had spent the last seven years desperately trying to bury.
Seven years ago.
The exact timeline my idiotic brother’s brain was currently trapped in.
Back then, Brooke had been mine.
I could still vividly remember the blinding sunlight pouring into my penthouse, illuminating the custom-designed, five-carat diamond engagement ring I had slipped onto her finger. We had been weeks away from the wedding of the century.
And then, in a single, catastrophic night, I had destroyed my entire universe.
It was a massive corporate gala celebrating the firm's international acquisition. As the heir apparent to the Whitmore empire, I had been surrounded by vultures, investors, and ambitious climbers. I remembered accepting a flute of champagne from a new marketing intern—a girl named Chelsea.
Within twenty minutes of finishing that glass, a heavy, paralyzing wave of heat had crashed over my nervous system.
My vision had blurred. My pulse had roared deafeningly in my ears. A toxic, synthetic haze had completely hijacked my cognitive control. I had stumbled away from the ballroom, dragging myself to my private suite upstairs, desperately trying to clear my head.
I blacked out.
When I finally regained consciousness hours later, my skull was splitting with an agonizing migraine.
And lying right beside me in the king-sized bed, with her clothes deliberately scattered across the floor in a perfect visual trap, was Chelsea.
I was paralyzed by the sick, nauseating realization that I had been drugged and framed by an intern who wanted to blackmail her way to the top. I knew, with absolute certainty, that my body had been too incapacitated to even touch her. Nothing had happened. It was a flawless, vicious setup.
But before I could even drag myself out of the bed to throw the scheming woman out, the door to the suite clicked open.
The memory of that exact second still made my chest violently contract.
Brooke stood in the doorway.
She was wearing a stunning evening gown, holding a massive bouquet of red roses she had brought up to surprise me for closing the deal.
I would never, for as long as I lived, forget the look in her eyes. The shock. The devastating betrayal. The instantaneous, absolute shattering of her trust.
The roses slipped from her trembling fingers. The heavy bouquet hit the hardwood floor with a dull thud, the crimson petals scattering across the floorboards like drops of fresh blood.
"Brooke... wait..." I had scrambled out of the tangled sheets, my head still spinning violently from the drugs.
I reached out for her, desperate to explain. I wanted to scream that I was spiked, that it was a trap, that I hadn't touched the woman in the bed.
But I hesitated.
I was young, arrogant, and poisoned by the pride of being a Whitmore. Facing the woman I loved, I felt a suffocating sense of humiliation. I didn't want to admit in raw, ugly detail that I, the untouchable Spencer Whitmore, had fallen victim to a cheap, sordid trick by a twenty-two-year-old intern. I stammered. I tried to shield her from the ugliness of the corporate trap, thinking I could handle it quietly later.
That single moment of arrogant hesitation cost me my life.
"Don't touch me," Brooke had whispered.
There were no hysterical tears. There was only a cold, terrifying fury that completely eclipsed her sorrow. She reached down, ripped the custom diamond ring off her finger, and hurled it directly at my face with all her strength.
The heavy diamond clipped my cheekbone, cutting the skin and drawing a drop of blood before clattering into the dark corner of the room.
"We're done, Spencer. You disgust me."
She turned and walked away. And she never looked back.
I spent the next few months descending into a manic hell. I fired Chelsea, I destroyed her career, I recovered the security footage proving I had been drugged, and I stood in the pouring rain outside Brooke’s apartment, begging for her forgiveness.
But Brooke’s pride was absolute. Her heart had turned to stone.
And while I was drowning in the ashes of my own mistakes, Grant stepped out of the shadows.
My quiet, righteous younger brother. The man who had secretly harbored a burning, forbidden obsession for his future sister-in-law for years.
He didn't care about the scandal. He put on the armor of a devoted savior. He used his unwavering, sickeningly perfect patience and absolute devotion to slowly, meticulously heal Brooke's broken heart. He gave her a safe harbor when she was drowning, and eventually, he legally made her his wife.
For five agonizing years, I had to stand on the sidelines like a defeated dog. I had to clench my fists and watch the woman I loved walk down the aisle toward my own brother. I had to watch him kiss her at family dinners. The daily torture of being a mere bystander in her life was a thousand times worse than the burn currently searing my arm.
"Spencer."
A soft, hesitant voice pulled me sharply out of the nightmare of the past.
I blinked, the sterile white walls of the medical lounge coming back into focus. The medic had finished bandaging my arm and quietly slipped out of the room, leaving just the two of us.
Brooke was looking up at me, her eyes lingering on the thick white gauze wrapped around my forearm.
"Does it hurt?" she asked, her voice carrying a trace of genuine guilt.
I stared into her beautiful eyes, the dark, predatory ambition in my chest finally breaking free from its five-year cage.
I reached out with my uninjured hand, gently brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She stiffened slightly, but she didn't pull away.
I smiled—a bitter, yet fiercely determined smile.
"As long as you're willing to stay by my side, Brooke," I murmured, my voice low and thick with emotion, "this pain is absolutely nothing."
Because the real pain hadn't even started yet.
Grant had personally smashed his own marriage. He had physically driven the love of his life straight into my waiting arms.
And I couldn't wait for the day his amnesia broke. I couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he remembered everything, only to realize he had personally handed his wife to the brother he hated.
That cremation of Grant's heart was going to be a spectacular show.
