Rejected Heiress And The Ruthless CEO

The fifty-year-old, smoky Lagavulin burned like liquid fire as it slid down Krista Cain's throat.

She sat in the darkest corner of The Obsidian Room, an exclusive, high-end jazz lounge, her fingers gripping the heavy crystal tumbler so hard her knuckles turned a stark, bone white. The heavy bass from the speakers vibrated violently against her ribs, but it couldn't drown out the frantic, shallow gasps tearing through her lungs.

Every time she blinked, the nightmare from three hours ago flashed behind her eyelids.

She saw the mahogany table in the Cain family estate. She heard the heavy, sickening thud of the DNA report hitting the wood.

"Fatimah is the true bloodline." Warren Cain's voice had been as cold as a morgue slab, while Beatrice Cain, her adoptive mother, had simply stood beside him, her perfectly manicured hands resting on her silk dress, her silence a brutal, suffocating wall of complicity. "You are nothing but a mistake."

The words had physically struck her. She had stumbled backward, her heel catching the edge of the Persian rug. The antique Ming vase had shattered against the marble floor with a deafening crash, leaving her standing in the wreckage of her twenty-year identity.

She had run. She had fled to the garden, the freezing rain soaking her designer dress, desperate to find Dannie Rowland. Her fiancé. Her last anchor.

Instead, she found him standing behind the floor-to-ceiling windows of the conservatory, a glass of bourbon in his hand, laughing with his friends.

"Marry a fake?" Dannie's sneer had pierced right through the thick glass and the pouring rain. "I don't collect the Cain family's second-hand trash."

Her dignity had snapped. The physical pain in her chest was so sharp it stole her breath. She had shoved the glass doors open, the storm blowing in with her. Dannie's laugh had died instantly. His eyes widened in caught panic.

Krista didn't speak. She marched up to him, raised her hand, and slapped him across the face. The crack of her palm against his cheek echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.

Her fingers trembled as she ripped the massive pink diamond engagement ring off her finger. She hurled it directly at his chest.

"We are done."

She had turned and walked back into the storm, leaving the ring in the dirt.

Now, the bartender slid a fresh pour of the expensive whiskey across the polished marble bar, snapping her back to the deafening reality of the club. Krista reached for the glass. A single drop of water-maybe rain, maybe a tear-fell from her eyelash and splashed against the back of her trembling hand.

Her vision blurred heavily from the alcohol. The room spun in a sickening circle.

"Hey, gorgeous. You look lonely."

The heavy scent of spilled spirits and an aggressively strong, overpowering cologne hit her face before the man did. A heavy, sweaty hand clamped down hard on her bare shoulder. Her stomach churned violently. Bile rose in her throat.

"Don't touch me,"