Chapter 1

It’s Valentine’s Day. The restaurant is all candles and couple-laughter and clinking glasses—an expensive little theater of love.

And I’m sitting alone at a table set for two.

Because my boyfriend of two years dumped me on Heart’s Day. Like he wanted the date stamped into my memory forever, like a cruel joke the universe would keep replaying.

Michael didn’t even have the decency to look guilty.

He sat across from me, neat in his pressed shirt, and slid the words across the table like a receipt.

“I’m seeing someone else,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

As if my body wasn’t still learning the shape of his hands. As if two years was a light inconvenience.

I remember blinking at him. Once. Twice. Like my eyes could force the sentence to rearrange into something less humiliating.

Then he added the part that still makes my ribs ache.

“You’re… difficult, Livia.” His jaw tightened. “You act like intimacy is a crime. Like I should be grateful you let me take you out and look pretty beside you.”

Frigid.

Prude.

He didn’t say those exact words, but they were there, heavy between us, poisoning the air.

I wanted to throw my wine in his face. I wanted to ask if love was supposed to come with a timeline and a threat.

Instead, my pride did what it always does—it made my spine straighten, made my voice go calm.

“Then go,” I said softly.

He did.

And now I’m here, staring at the reflection of a woman in my glass—lipstick still perfect, eyes a little too bright, smile a little too sharp.

“I’m not frigid,” I whisper. “I’m not a prude.”

The woman in the glass smiles back like she doesn’t believe me.

I tip the remaining wine into my mouth in one long swallow, like I’m trying to drown the taste of him. It’s sweet and bitter at once.

My phone sits face-down on the table. No messages. No apology. Not even a polite “get home safe.”

I glance around the restaurant again.

Couples everywhere. Hands intertwined. Foreheads pressed close. Someone laughing like they’ve never been hurt before.

Salt in my wound.

Then I see him.

A man alone in the corner.

A table for two, too.

An empty chair across from him like someone left in a hurry—or never showed up at all.

He’s dressed in dark, clean lines. Not flashy, but expensive. The kind of expensive you don’t need to announce.

He holds a drink, untouched. His gaze is fixed on nothing and everything at once, sharp enough that it feels like it could cut glass.

He looks… dangerous.

“Nah,” I murmur, lifting my hand and making an X in the air. “Erase. He looks scary.”

But my eyes drift back anyway.

Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s the humiliation burning under my skin. Maybe it’s the fact that I spent several hundred dollars on this dress and I refuse to let tonight end with me crying into a napkin like a cliché.

Michael thought I was just for display.

Fine.

Let him choke on that thought.

I’m twenty-five. I’ve been careful for years—careful with money, careful with men, careful with everything because I have a ten-million-dollar boulder chained to my ankle.

My parents’ “love nest.” My inheritance. The only thing they left behind that felt like home—and the only thing I can lose if I don’t buy it back. Ten million dollars doesn’t come from a nine-to-five and occasional local modeling gigs, no matter how many glossy brochures my face ends up on.

I’ve been living like I’m already drowning.

Tonight, I want to breathe. Even if it’s reckless air.

I stand.

My heels wobble, and I catch myself with a hand on the table. I force my shoulders back, my chin up. If I’m going to humiliate myself, I’ll do it with style.

“I’m not frigid,” I whisper again like a spell. “I’m not a prude.”

I walk across the restaurant, each step louder in my head than it probably is. The closer I get, the colder the space around him feels—as if the corner belongs to him and the air obeys.

When I reach his table, he looks up.

And I stop breathing.

His eyes are… wrong. Not empty. Not dead. Just… unreadable. Like a door that’s been locked for so long it forgot what warmth feels like.

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

He says nothing either, just watches me like he’s deciding what I am.

A threat?

A nuisance?

A joke?

My pride flares.

“No turning back, Livia,” a voice in my head warns.

I swallow and slide into the chair opposite him before I can lose my nerve.

The silence is thick. Heavy. It presses against my chest until I hate it.

So I break it.

“Do you have a date?” I ask, aiming for casual and landing somewhere between bold and insane.

He doesn’t answer.

My cheeks heat. The wine tries to climb up my throat.

I refuse to let it.

“Okay,” I say, breath shaking just slightly. “Let’s be direct.”

My hands tighten around the edge of the table so he won’t see them tremble.

“I got dumped tonight,” I continue. “On Valentine’s Day. In this exact restaurant.”

His gaze flickers—just once—like that information interests him more than it should.

I inhale.

“I’m not going to spend the rest of the night crying,” I say. “And I’m not going to beg someone to want me.”

I lean forward, voice low enough that the couples nearby can’t hear.

“I want someone who can make me forget his name.”

His eyes sharpen.

My pulse spikes. Heat blooms under my skin again, half adrenaline, half something darker.

I force the words out before my courage evaporates.

“I want a man tonight,” I say. “No promises. No strings. Just… tonight.”

Still no response.

My pride snaps like a stretched wire.

“Fine,” I whisper, standing up too fast. “That’s a no. Thanks.”

I turn away, jaw clenched, determined not to look back.

I make it one step.

His voice finally cuts through the noise of the restaurant—deep, calm, and suddenly right behind me.

“Sit down,” he says.

It’s not a request.

I freeze.

Then he adds, softer, almost amused—

“And tell me what you think you’re asking for.”

Chapter 2

My breath catches.

A sane woman would walk away.

A sane woman would return to her table, call a friend, go home, crawl into bed, and pretend she doesn’t feel like she’s splitting open from the inside.

But sanity left with Michael.

And the man behind me doesn’t feel like someone you ignore without consequences.

I turn back slowly.

He’s still seated, one hand around his glass, gaze pinned on me like a hook.

I sit.

My heart is pounding too loudly. I’m suddenly aware of everything—my bare shoulders, the way the candlelight makes his face look carved, the faint scent of expensive cologne and something darker underneath.

“You look like you want revenge,” he says.

The bluntness stuns me.

“I want—” My voice wavers, and I hate it. I clear my throat. “I want to stop feeling stupid.”

His mouth curves into something that isn’t quite a smile.

“Stupid is thinking a stranger will fix what’s broken,” he says. “So. Are you stupid?”

I should be offended.

Instead, the challenge steadies me.

“I’m careful,” I say. “Too careful. And tonight I’m tired of it.”

He studies me for a long moment, like he’s weighing something I can’t see.

Then he sets his glass down.

“Stand,” he says.

“What?”

“Stand up,” he repeats, voice even. “Turn.”

Heat rushes up my neck. “Excuse me?”

His eyes stay on mine. “If you’re asking me to spend the night with you, I’m going to look at you.”

My pride flares again, hotter this time.

Fine.

I stand and turn once, slow, controlled, as if I’m on a runway and not in the middle of a high-end restaurant offering myself to a stranger out of spite.

When I face him again, he’s still unreadable.

But his gaze has changed—sharper, darker.

He stands too, taller than I expected, presence filling the space between us without touching.

“Do you know what you want?” he asks.

I swallow. “Yes.”

His eyes drop to my mouth and back up.

“Then say it,” he murmurs. “No performance. No bravado. Say it like you mean it.”

My pulse stutters.

I force my voice steady. “I want to go somewhere private. With someone who won’t pity me.”

A beat.

“And rules?” he asks.

I blink. “Rules?”

His voice remains calm, but there’s steel beneath it. “Consent. Safety. Control.”

The fact that he says those words—plainly, like they matter—hits me harder than any filthy line ever could.

I exhale slowly. “Rules are good.”

His gaze holds mine. “If you want this, you don’t get to regret it halfway through.”

“I won’t,” I lie, or maybe I don’t.

He seems to hear the wobble anyway.

“Tell me a word,” he says. “One word that means stop. No questions.”

My stomach flips.

I’m tipsy, but not helpless. My mind is fogged, not gone.

“Red,” I say.

“Good,” he replies. “And if you need to slow down?”

“Yellow.”

He nods once, decisive. “Now you’re thinking.”

Then he gestures—subtle—and a man in a black suit appears as if he’s been waiting the whole time.

The suited man doesn’t look at me like I’m a problem. He looks at me like I’m a guest.

“Follow,” the man says quietly.

I glance back at the stranger—this cold-eyed man who still hasn’t given me his name.

“You’re coming?” I ask.

His gaze doesn’t soften, but something in it promises I’m not imagining this.

“In a moment,” he says. “Go.”

My skin prickles as I follow the suited man toward the elevator.

We pass couples. Laughter. Roses. A woman feeding her boyfriend chocolate like it’s a ritual.

I keep my chin high.

The elevator doors slide open.

The suited man steps in with me. The doors close. The ride is silent, the air thick.

I try to speak, but my tongue feels too heavy.

The elevator dings.

We step into a private hallway so quiet it feels like money—polished, controlled, untouchable.

A keycard clicks.

A massive door opens.

And when I step inside, my breath leaves me in a rush.

The suite is… obscene in its elegance. Floor-to-ceiling windows. City lights like jewels. Furniture that looks like art you’re not allowed to sit on.

I turn to the suited man, suddenly wary.

“Where are you going?” I ask as he moves back toward the door.

He pauses only long enough to say, “Make yourself comfortable. The boss will be here in a moment.”

Then the door closes.

Locks.

The word hits me like a cold splash.

Boss.

My pulse spikes.

I turn toward the room, toward the windows, toward the shadowed seating area—

And a voice speaks from the darkness, low and familiar.

“I’m already here.”

I freeze as a figure rises from the couch.

Those void-dark eyes pin me in place.

“You shouldn’t wander,” he says softly. “Not in my territory.”