Mine to Punish

She forgot the boy she destroyed. He has spent twelve years remembering her.

At seventeen, Sophia read a boy's private journal aloud to a laughing hallway. Now she makes a fortune from on-camera apologies about healing. Off camera, remorse stops being an act. She cannot remember his name. She cannot put a face to what she did. On a remote island, solitude is supposed to be her penance.

The stranger next door feels like something else. He listens without judgment. He buys small, kind things. Nothing surprises him for long. Sophia thinks he moves like winter. She thinks he may be the safest man she has ever met.

He is not a stranger. He is the boy from the journal, grown into a billionaire and hidden behind another name. He came with a plan built like a contract: seduce her, punish her, walk away free. The door will never lock. Her word will end everything. But consent cannot make obsession merciful, and every hour near her threatens the control he crossed twelve years to reclaim.

Can he become her reckoning without discovering that the trap was built for him?

For readers of H.D. Carlton and RuNyx: fully open-door heat, revenge sharpened into obsession, and a dark HEA with an unreformed hero who offers no apology.

The door stays unlocked. After twelve years, walking away may be the one thing his control cannot make him do.