Love and Ashes: A Forced Proximity Billionaire Romance of Betrayal and Revenge (Black Suit Billionaires #8)

I always thought the worst night of my life would be the one where everything fell apart.
Turns out—it was the night everything finally began.

The gala was supposed to be my moment.
My research. My achievement.
My parents glowing with pride.
My boyfriend, Marcus, at my side.

Instead, I walked backstage and found him kissing Victoria Ashford—
my mother’s friend,
the woman who funded my department,
the woman who never once saw me as anything but useful.

And when I tried to walk away,
my own parents stopped me—not to comfort me,
but to warn me.

“Don’t cause a scene.”
“Victoria is too important.”
“We’ll discuss this at home.”

That was the moment I finally
I wasn’t a daughter.
I was an investment.

So I ran.
Into the rain, into the night… straight into Damian Calloway.

The billionaire with the quiet voice and the haunted eyes.
The man the Ashfords destroyed a decade ago.
The one person in the world who instantly recognized the look I wore.

Because he’d worn it too.

He didn’t offer pity.
He offered something far more

A chance to fight back.

I should have walked away.
Instead, I followed him to his mountain estate and stepped into a war I didn’t know I’d been preparing for my entire life.

Together, we
Marcus’s academic fraud.
My parents’ involvement in Ashford cover-ups.
A hidden trail of silenced victims.
And the truth—ugly, undeniable, powerful enough to burn an empire.

Somewhere between the sleepless nights, whispered strategies, and stolen moments of peace…
we became more than allies.
More than survivors.

We became a team.

And when the night of Damian’s gala came,
I stood on that stage—
in red, unbroken, unapologetic—
and told the world everything they tried to bury.

The victims joined me.
The Ashfords fell.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t frightened of the truth.

I was free because of it.

This isn’t a story about being saved.
It’s a story about burning down the cage they built for me—
and choosing, finally, to walk toward the life waiting on the other side.

A life I’m building with a man who refuses to let me shrink ever again.

A life forged from love and ashes.