Crowned by Fate (Crowned 2)

He shot up from his chair, his eyes on mine. For a second, all of the oxygen is filtered out from the room and all I can hear is my heavy breathing. In and out. He left you. He would always leave you.

He looks sinfully good.

Bryant wore a suit like a soldier would armor, and every day he went to war, only this was a battle that he wouldn’t win.

“Husband.” I smirk, folding my arms over my chest.

“Wife,” he seethes. I take this moment to breathe in his appearance. His shoulders larger, his jaw more prominent. He was always beautifully fit and articulate, but he looks different. His skin is still glowing, yet it isn’t as flawless as it used to be. He doesn’t look older, he just looks—different. For a thirty-one-year-old man, he was every bit the monster that I dreamed of in my head. The monster I softened enough to marry, although I’m not so sure I softened him at all.

“Everyone get the fuck out,” he barks, but his eyes never leave mine. Everyone split around me as they exit the boardroom and I watch as he leans forward, his hand coming to the back of the chair. He squeezes. “How’d you get out?”

“Well,” I murmur, making my way farther into the room and taking a seat at the head of the table. “Not with the help of you, that’s for sure.”

He bares his straight teeth. It’d look beautiful if he wasn’t so feral. “You’re not my problem anymore, Isa. Because of you, I lost everything.” The door bursts open behind me, but I don’t pay it any attention, my eyes staying on Bryant. Sure enough, he waves his hand toward the security guards until they’re scurrying out the door.

“Did you know that my father has been drugging me for god knows how long, using my brain as his own personal science project for some new pharmaceutical drug? I’m not fucking crazy, Bryant. My father—”

“—Stop!” Bryant glares at me from across the table. “I don’t want to fucking hear it. I’ve heard enough fucking lies from you.”

I push up from the doorway and stumble my way toward him. His size is still every bit as intimidating as I remember. He towers over people like his buildings tower over New York. Dark, moody, and controlling. He’s built so large that he not only physically takes up the atmosphere in any room, but it is also mentally draining to be in a room with him. He exudes pure alpha energy. It’s intense on the best of days. His aura is rougher than his beautiful exterior. My ex-husband is a beast, but I’m no beauty. I know exactly how to draw energy from him. I just had to get close enough.

“Isa…” he warns, his eyes coming to mine. He’s wearing an incredibly perfect Armani suit, tailored to every single curve of his body. That was Bryant, though. A brute in a suit.

“Bryant…” I whisper, bringing my hand up to his cheek. His jaw flexes beneath my palm, but just like an unexpected power cut, the door behind us flies open, interrupting our moment.

“What the fuck do you want!” I yell, spinning around to face the security guards again.

Only it wasn’t the security guards.

It was a tall, skinny blonde woman with enough makeup on her face I could scratch my name into her forehead.

Her eyes are on Bryant first, before they slowly draw to me. Blue sapphire with a hint of gray.

“Who the fuck are you?” I tilt my head.

The woman steps forward, her eyes cutting back to Bryant as she slowly lifts her left hand. “I’m his fiancée.” My heart splits open in my chest, the ache almost unbearable. “But I know who you are.” I want to lash out. Be angry. Take hold of the anger and pain that has so viciously risen to the surface and throw it right back in his face, but I have too much pride to show weakness. To show this woman, or Bryant, that they got to me.

He just fucking replaced me.

I blink back the tears that threaten to expose my pain and straighten my shoulders. “Funny how you know who I am, yet I don’t know who you are…”

“Isa!” Bryant growls, but I ignore him. He has long since punched his ticket to board the tell Isa what to do train.

I take one step toward the leggy blonde. “You seem familiar.”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t.” There’s an air of diffident that clings to her. She’s Bryant’s old type, before he met me.

My eyes narrow as I take another step as Bryant’s fingers flexed around my arm. Spinning around, I cut him with a glare. “She was my daughter, Bryant. I lost her too, not just you.”

He searched my eyes. “What do you want, Isa?”