Office Hours

Years ago, her father destroyed his life. Now he's her professor—and revenge has never tasted this dangerous. Reina Chen doesn't do quiet. At twenty-two, she's the purple-haired grad student who challenges every argument, questions every assumption, and refuses to shrink for anyone—especially not for Professor Finn Kane, the infuriatingly brilliant man teaching her Forensic Psychology seminar. Kane is forty, devastatingly sharp, and built like control personified. He wears three-piece suits like armor, speaks in surgical precision, and has a reputation for dismantling students' egos before they finish their first sentence. Most people are terrified of him. Reina isn't most people. Their first clash happens in front of the entire class. She calls out the flaws in his logic. He pushes back harder, demanding more, testing whether her intellect matches her audacity. The tension between them crackles like a live wire—intellectual sparring that feels dangerously close to something else entirely. Then she catches him kissing another student in his office late one night. The rumors are true. Professor Kane crosses lines. Reina tells herself she'd never be that reckless. That stupid. That weak. But she doesn't plan for the way he looks at her when he thinks she's not watching. The heat in his voice when they argue. The moment his control shatters and he kisses her like a man who's been starving for years—and suddenly she's the hypocrite she swore she'd never be. What Reina doesn't know is that Kane didn't end up as her professor by accident. He's been waiting fifteen years for this. Fifteen years since her father's testimony destroyed his family, cost his father everything, and left Kane with nothing but rage and a hunger for revenge. She walked into his classroom, and he saw his chance. Seduce her. Ruin her. Make her pay for the sins of her father. The plan was simple. Cold. Surgical. But revenge gets complicated when the woman you're supposed to destroy is the only one who's ever truly seen you. When her sharp mind matches yours. When touching her stops feeling like strategy and starts feeling like necessity. Now they're tangled in a forbidden relationship that violates every rule. The university would expel her and fire him. Her mother would disown her. His conscience screams that this is wrong—using her, wanting her, needing her all at once. And the truth is coming. When Reina discovers why he really let her into his life, she'll have a choice: walk away and salvage what's left of her dignity, or stay and force him to choose between the vengeance he's nursed for fifteen years and the woman who's become his addiction. A vendetta that ignited obsession. And two people who discover that sometimes the person you hate most is the only one who can save you. But some betrayals cut too deep to forgive. And some desires burn too hot to survive.