His Dangerous Love On Ice Chapter 224: Zane's Pov

My father's voice came through the phone with that particular brand of satisfaction that made me want to throw the damn thing across the room.

"Zane," he said, quite calm for a man who had caused so many chaos "I thought you'd want to hear the good news directly from me."

I didn't respond. Just stood there at the floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse, looking out at the Seattle skyline, phone pressed to my ear, waiting.

"I've been successfully released from every accusation," Williams continued, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. "Every single charge. Every plan you so carefully orchestrated. None of them hit me, son. Not a single one stuck."

My grip tightened on the phone, but I kept my voice level. "Congratulations."

"Oh, don't congratulate me yet," he said, and now there was something darker underneath that smooth tone. Something vicious. "Because now it's my turn. And I'm going to make you lose everything you've labored for, Zane. Everything you've built. Everything you think you've achieved by destroying me."

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

Short. Sharp. Utterly humorless.

"Go for it," I said.

Silence on the other end. Like he'd been expecting anger, or fear, or some kind of reaction that would give him satisfaction.

But I was done giving him anything.

"You think this is funny?" Williams asked, his voice dropping to something dangerous.

"I think you're predictable," I said. "I think you've been threatening me my entire life and I'm tired of pretending it matters. So go ahead. Do your worst. Make your plans. Destroy everything I've built."

I paused, letting the words sink in.

"And when you're done, when you've exhausted every option and burned through every connection and called in every favor you think you still have—you'll realize that I stopped being afraid of you a long time ago."

Another beat of silence.

"You destroyed your own father," Williams said quietly, and for the first time, I heard something that might have been actual emotion underneath the calculated control. "You exposed me. Humiliated me. Tried to send me to prison. For what? For a girl you've known for less than a year? For people who aren't even your family?"

"For people who deserved better than what you were doing to them," I corrected. "But you wouldn't understand that, would you? The concept of doing something for someone else without expecting anything in return."

"You're just like me," he said, and there was certainty in his voice now. Conviction. "You can pretend all you want that you're different, that you're better, but at the end of the day, Zane, you're exactly like me. Ruthless. Willing to destroy anyone who gets in your way."

"Maybe," I said. "But there's one critical difference between us."

"And what's that?"

"I know when to stop."

I ended the call before he could respond, my hands folding the phone against my palm as I stood there in the silence of my living room.

My father thought he could make me lose everything.

He had no idea that everything I cared about couldn't be taken by his games and his manipulations and his decades-old feuds.

The company could burn. The money could disappear. The Mercer name could be dragged through every scandal and controversy he could manufacture.

None of it mattered.

Not compared to—

Footsteps in the hallway pulled me from my thoughts.

I turned to see one of my security team standing in the doorway, looking uncomfortable in a way that immediately put me on alert.

"Boss," he said carefully. "You have a visitor."

My eyebrow rose.

A visitor.

At my penthouse.

That was impossible.

This wasn't a place people just showed up to. Wasn't a location you could Google or look up in some directory. I'd made damn sure of that when I'd bought it—paid extra for the privacy, for the security, for the assurance that my home would be the one place I could exist without the world knowing where to find me.

Only a handful of people knew this address.

Olive. Nikolai. Williams. A few key members of my team.

That was it.

"Who?" I asked, my voice sharp.

The security guard shifted his weight. "A woman. She says she—"

But he didn't get to finish.

Because a voice cut through the space—sharp and fast and so utterly, devastatingly familiar that I froze.

"Zane."

I turned slowly.

And there she was.

Elena Volkov.

Standing in my living room like she had every right to be there, like seventeen years hadn't passed since I'd last seen her face, like she could just walk back into my life without warning and expect—what? A welcome? Gratitude?

She looked different.

Older, obviously. The girl I'd known had been all sharp edges and too-big eyes and wild hair she'd never bothered to tame.

This woman was polished. Perfected. Every inch of her carefully constructed to be beautiful in that particular way that fashion magazines worshipped—angular features, perfect skin, clothes that could get a single nut for my dodge car.

But her eyes.

Those amber-green eyes were exactly the same.

And they were staring at me with an intensity that I didn't want.

"Zane," she said again, and her voice broke slightly on my name. "Oh my god. It's really you. I can't—I can't believe I'm actually—"

She took a step toward me, and I watched her hand come up like she was going to touch my face, like she had any right to put her hands on me.

I took a step back.

Her hand froze mid-air, and something flickered across her face. Hurt, maybe. Or anger disguised as hurt.

"Elena," I said, my voice flat. Cold. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I—" She laughed, but it came out choked. Wrong. "Zane, I haven't seen you in like seventeen years. Seventeen years. Do you have any idea what that was like? Wondering if you were dead or alive? Wondering why you just disappeared one morning without any explanation, without any goodbye?"

Her voice was rising now, getting louder, more emotional with every word.

And I recognized this.