Chapter 82 83

Chapter 82 83
Krystal Hunter – POV
He thought it was luck. That coffee — one sugar, one cream, not too hot, not too bitter. A perfect accident.
But of course, it wasn’t.
I smirked inwardly as Darren lifted the mug to his lips like it was manna from heaven, his sharp lawyer’s eyes narrowing for just a second before softening. He suspected something, but he didn’t know. Not yet.
That was the art of it. To make a man like Darren Johnson, who prided himself on control, feel as though he was still holding the reins while I was quietly stitching the bridle.
I’d planned it all: the laugh with the chef, just loud enough for him to overhear and feel like he’d stumbled into something real, intimate. The bacon and eggs instead of green juice — because I knew what kind of man he was. Darren didn’t want luxury for breakfast, he wanted comfort. And comfort was the one thing men like him never admitted they craved.
And then there was me. Fresh from the shower, hair still wet, cheeks pink from steam, looking as natural as a woman like me could possibly manage. I knew the effect. Vulnerability wrapped in gloss, approachable but still out of reach.
He was watching me now, pretending not to. The way his eyes lingered a second too long when I laughed, the way he leaned forward slightly when I teased him. Every little tell was mine to keep.
I let him have his second helping of eggs, let him feel comfortable enough to joke with me about traditions and breakfast. And when he said, “Maybe I wouldn’t mind that,” I felt the tiniest shiver of victory.
Hook. Line. Sink.
Of course, I didn’t let it show. I never did. Instead, I tilted my head, gave him that knowing, amused smile, and reminded him lightly, “Don’t get attached. Breakfast is just breakfast.”
The way his jaw tightened told me he’d taken the bait. He didn’t want it to be “just breakfast.” He wanted it to mean more.
Good.
Because meaning more was exactly the trap.
I buttered my toast slowly, deliberately, as if we weren’t both silently measuring each other across the table. He thought I was funny, down-to-earth, unlike the brittle socialites he knew. That was by design. He thought I’d let him see behind the curtain — that I was real. Also by design.
What he didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that I had lived this game before.
In another life, Darren Johnson had done the same: smiled, charmed, made me feel chosen. Then he gutted me, took what was mine, destroyed what I loved. I had died once for that mistake.
But not this time.
This time I had every move mapped. Every word I spoke, every glance I allowed him to catch, every small detail — from the coffee to the casual brush of my fingers against his when I passed the salt — was another knot in the rope I was binding around him.
He thought he was getting closer to me.
In reality, he was getting closer to his undoing.
I looked at him then, really looked — the way his tie was still loose from last night, the dark circles under his eyes that he tried to hide behind smirks, the way his hand curled around that coffee like it was the only thing holding him together.
A part of me, the part that remembered warmth before betrayal, almost felt pity. Almost.
But vengeance was too delicious to let pity win.
I smiled sweetly, as though none of those thoughts lived behind my eyes. “Eat up, Darren. You’ll need the energy for whatever chaos waits at your office.”
And he smiled back, thinking we were sharing something real.
If only he knew how thoroughly I was already dismantling him, one breakfast at a time.


RAVEN ANDERSON'S POV
Few days later.
It started small. Always does. A single shipment — late, failed, broken somewhere between port and warehouse.
At first, I thought it was bad luck. A routine hiccup in a line of business that had run without flaw for years. My father didn’t see it that way. He’d built his empire on silence and smooth deals, and I was supposed to keep it that way.
“You call this ordinary?” he’d snapped, slamming his fist against the table, eyes wild. “Police sniffing around is notordinary. Did you forget what’s at stake?”
No, I hadn’t. But how the hell was I supposed to predict that this shipment, of all shipments, would be the one to draw unwanted eyes?
And then came the gossip. Social media lit up like wildfire — stories about my thesis. Not my brilliance, not my hard work, no. The narrative painted me as a fraud. That Krystal McLaren — her name carved like poison in every post — had written it for me. That the only thing I’d ever achieved was stolen.
I tried to call her. God, did I try. My phone buzzed in my hand for hours, her name flashing against the screen, always leading to voicemail. Always silence. No one in her family knew where she was — or if they did, they weren’t telling me.
I couldn’t decide which burned more — the fact that she was gone, or the fact that I suddenly needed her name cleared to save my own.
And then MJ McLaren. That bastard. One argument with her had escalated into a breakup that the tabloids ate alive. Photos, videos, angles where I looked like the villain — every headline screaming my downfall. “Anderson heir brawls in elite lounge.” “Shameful display of immaturity.”
I’d built a reputation of cool precision, and now I was painted as reckless, desperate.
What the hell was happening?
The final nail came like a blade I didn’t see. One of my mother’s clinics — closed overnight. Permits revoked, inspectors swarming the place with cameras, staff dismissed without warning. My mother wept at the dining table, her hands shaking as she stared at the papers. “They said we violated health codes. Health codes, Raven! We’ve run that clinic for years without a single complaint.”
I had no answers for her.
I had no answers for any of it.
Everything I touched was unraveling, like someone had picked a single thread and watched me choke in the weave.
I paced the length of my room, pulling at my hair, replaying each failure in my mind. The shipment. The police. The gossip. The fight. The clinic.
One mistake could be explained. Even two. But five? All at once?
That wasn’t chance.
That was war.
But who the hell had declared it?
And then the pieces clicked.
Too neatly. Too damn perfectly.
The whispers in the underground weren’t subtle. A name kept slipping through, dropped in the wrong places, with just enough weight to make my blood run cold. Darren Johnson.
That bastard.
The corporate lawyer with his smug face and his family name dipped in respectability. Of course it was him. Who else would dare poke into my business, stir up old gossip, tip the police into sniffing shipments that had been clean for years? Who else had the reach to touch my mother’s clinic with legal red tape and health inspectors like they were his own personal hounds?
It wasn’t the McLarens this time. It wasn’t even my father’s rivals. It was Johnson.
I gripped the edge of my desk until the veins stood out in my arms, my teeth grinding so hard I thought they’d crack. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?” I muttered to the empty room. “You think you can bury me while smiling in a suit, acting like you’re better than the rest of us?”
No.
Not me. Not my family.
He’d picked the wrong Anderson.
I wasn’t going to let Darren Johnson walk around Manhattan thinking he’d beaten me. I wasn’t going to let him smirk in boardrooms, thinking Raven Anderson was finished.
If he wanted a war, he’d damn well get one.
I’d ruin him the way he tried to ruin me. Piece by piece. Client by client. Woman by woman. He had no idea what kind of destruction I could buy, no idea how fast Manhattan’s love affair with a lawyer could sour once the right dirt spread like wildfire.
I slammed my fist onto the table, the sound echoing sharp and final. “Fuck you, Darren,” I hissed. “I’ll burn everything you love, everything you’ve built, until you’re the one choking on ashes.”
And for the first time in days, I smiled.
Because if Johnson thought I was going down quiet, he was about to learn exactly how loud an Anderson could get.



War. That’s what it was now.
The more I paced my office, the more my anger carved itself into clarity. Darren Johnson had embarrassed me, cornered me, painted me into a fool. No one did that to an Anderson and walked away intact.
I wasn’t some soft heir who folded under pressure. My father had raised me on fire and knives. If Darren wanted to play dirty, then fine — I’d show him just how much dirt he could choke on.
First strike had to be public. Visible enough that people started whispering, second-guessing their precious lawyer golden boy. Manhattan thrived on gossip — clients didn’t care about facts, they cared about reputation. I didn’t have to destroy his business all at once. Just smear his perfect glass image with enough cracks that the rest shattered on its own.
I grabbed my phone and started dialing.
“Caleb,” I snapped when one of my old college friends picked up, half-drunk from the sound of it. “Remember that thing with Johnson’s brother? Yeah. Dig it up. Loudly. I want every blogger and every whispering vulture in the city feasting on it by next week.”
Next call. “Marta. You still work at Midtown Bank, right? Good. I need you to leak something small about Johnson’s checks bouncing. Doesn’t matter if it’s true. Make it look like he’s overextended.”
Another. “Jonas. You still have that contact at The Tribune? Perfect. Feed him something about Johnson laundering money for clients. Anonymous source, shadowy tip — I don’t care. Make sure it runs on the gossip page first, then spreads.”
Piece by piece. Strike by strike.
And the real play? The personal one. Because men like Darren Johnson — clean-cut, smug, polished — they broke fastest when it got personal. A scandal in the sheets, whispers about mistresses, about women. Manhattan loved nothing more than a powerful man with dirty secrets.
And I knew exactly where to look.
I smirked, leaning back in my chair, the beginnings of a plan curling sharp and sweet in my chest. Johnson had always thought himself untouchable. But I knew the girls who worked the high-end lounges, the waitresses who’d served him drinks. It wouldn’t take much to paint a story — the right smile, the right insinuation, and suddenly his name was on every lip, his “integrity” a laughing stock.
By the time I was done, Darren wouldn’t just lose business. He’d lose face. Respect.
And men like him? Respect was oxygen.
I poured myself a drink, the amber liquid catching the light. One sip, slow and deliberate.
“To you, Johnson,” I murmured to the empty room. “Enjoy your last breaths. Because the Andersons don’t forgive. And we don’t forget.”