Too Late For His Love

I was the genius who built my husband Blake's billion-dollar empire. For ten years, I was his secret weapon, the ghost in the machine who wrote the code that made him a king.

But when he fell for his doe-eyed intern, Cassidy, the man I loved became a monster.

He used our five-year-old son as a point of leverage to bend me to his will, and in that moment, my world fractured.

But that was nothing. When Cassidy feigned a grave illness, he orchestrated events that left me on a medical table, my very being treated as a resource he could deploy for his new obsession.

I was awake but unable to move as they subjected me to an invasive medical procedure against my will. I heard him give the order: "Keep her alive. If this doesn't work, she has other biological assets we can draw upon."

He thought he had broken me, that I was just another asset to be discarded.

He forgot one thing: a genius always has a contingency plan.

I activated Project Chimera, an escape protocol I'd built years ago. As the military helicopter lifted off with my son and me, I gave my final order: "Initiate the digital scorched-earth protocol. Render the core data inert."

He could have his little bird. I was taking everything else.

Chapter 1

Avery POV:

The first time Blake used our son to control me, we were thirty thousand feet in the air, encased in the cream leather and polished mahogany of his private jet. He didn't shout. He didn't even raise his voice. He just leaned across the table, his blue eyes-the same eyes that used to look at me like I was the only star in his sky-as cold and empty as a winter night.

"Where is she, Avery?"

His voice was a low growl, a rumble of thunder before the storm. I had arranged for Cassidy Clements, the doe-eyed intern who had become his obsession, to be sent away. A quiet transfer to a European subsidiary, a generous severance, a clean break. I thought it was a mercy, a way to save our marriage without destroying a young woman's life, however manipulative she was.

I was a fool.

"I did what you couldn't, Blake," I said, my own voice trembling slightly. "I ended it."

His fist slammed down on the table, rattling the crystal glasses. A tremor of fear shot through me, hot and sharp. This wasn't the Blake I knew. The man I'd loved for ten years, the man I'd built an empire for from the ground up, was gone. In his place was this monster, his face twisted with a rage I didn't recognize.

"You ended it?" he snarled, leaning so close I could smell the expensive whiskey on his breath. "You have no right."

He stood up, his tall frame casting a long, menacing shadow over me. He walked to the back of the cabin where our five-year-old son, Jagger, was sleeping peacefully, his