The office was silent.
A different kind of silence — not the awkward hush of boardrooms or the ticking tension before a deal is signed — but the heavy, all-consuming silence of power. The kind that whispered rather than shouted. That weighed more than gold. That demanded respect the moment a person stepped into the room.
Khalid Voss sat behind a sleek obsidian desk, fingers steepled, unmoving.
Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the glittering skyline of City A, but his eyes weren't on the view. They were on a contract, unopened, lying in front of him. Not because he needed to read it — his legal team already had — but because he was distracted.
By her.
Sofia Amari.
The girl with fire in her eyes and a sin on her lips.
He had watched her fall apart in front of a crowd. Watched as her picture — their kiss — was exposed by Sabrina. Watched her father yell. Zayn rage. Her stepmother perform.
And he?
He sat through it all like a statue carved from ancient vengeance.
No one suspected a thing.
Not that he was the reason her world had shattered. Not that he had built an empire grander than the Voss legacy. Not that the man Zayn had mocked his whole life had returned — masked, calculating, and untouchable.
Khalid leaned back in his chair, his black dress shirt stretched across his chest, tailored within an inch of perfection. His watch — a limited-edition Vortec — ticked softly. His jaw tightened.
They don't even know who signs their salaries.
Because here, at K.H Group of Companies, he wasn't Khalid Voss, the illegitimate son.
He was Mr. Black — the faceless genius behind the city's most flourishing empire. The man whose identity no one had cracked. Whose face never appeared in the media. Whose voice came only through encrypted emails and rare, distorted phone calls.
Even his father… didn't know.
Neither did Zayn.
They thought he was a failure.
A mistake born from a single night between their precious patriarch and a servant girl named Helene. They thought throwing him into the gutter was the end of him.
They were wrong.
---
He still remembered the night he ran away.
The yelling. The bruises. The lies.
Zayn laughing when his father slapped him across the face. His stepmother smiling tightly in the corner like his pain was a show.
"You were never supposed to exist," his father had said. "You're a stain on this family."
Khalid had been sixteen.
He ran out into the night with nothing but rage in his chest and a bloodied lip. He didn't beg. He didn't cry. He just disappeared.
And while they forgot him…
He built everything.
He started with nothing — slept in warehouses, washed dishes in kitchens, coded on stolen laptops, sold designs under aliases. He got smarter. Colder. Richer. Every failure pushed him harder. Every success tasted like quiet revenge.
By twenty-one, he had registered his first company.
By twenty-three, he was already worth more than Zayn.
Now, at twenty-six, K.H Group had swallowed up every industry the Voss name tried to cling to — real estate, fashion, tech, media, oil, even pharmaceuticals.
And now, the final move.
Sofia.
---
He hadn't planned it at first.
The kiss… was spontaneous. A challenge. A mistake, maybe.
But when she looked at him that night at the engagement party — with anger, confusion, and something else burning behind her eyes — he saw an opportunity.
A woman trapped in gold chains.
A pawn he could turn into a queen.
Sofia Amari wasn't just Zayn's fiancée. She was leverage. Symbol. Catalyst. If Zayn could lose her, what else could he lose?
Everything, Khalid thought.
And he would take it slowly.
---
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
"Come in," he said, voice deep, composed.
Jude, his personal assistant, stepped in. "Sir, the board is ready for the Q3 briefing."
"I'll join in ten," Khalid replied.
Jude nodded and left without further comment. No one asked him questions. No one probed into his past. They knew better.
He stood and walked to the window, hands in his pockets, gazing at the city that once chewed him up and spat him out. Now, it was his kingdom. The skyscrapers bowed to him. The Voss name was a dying echo. The streets he had once roamed barefoot now had his companies on every corner.
Khalid took a deep breath.
He didn't believe in fate. Fate was for the weak. He believed in moves. In strategies. In burning every bridge that didn't serve him.
And now, Sofia was his wife — by mistake to the world, but by design to him.
She had no idea who he really was.
Neither did her father. Or Zayn. Or anyone in that suffocating mansion.
But she would find out.
In time.
When it was too late to run.
---
Later that evening, in a private penthouse somewhere high above City A, Khalid removed his jacket and poured himself a glass of whiskey. He wasn't a heavy drinker — he hated losing control — but tonight… he made an exception.
His mind played back the image of Sofia standing before her guests, face flushed with shame, eyes glassy. How her father shouted. How Zayn's fists trembled. How the room buzzed with scandal.
And how he sat like a king watching pawns collapse.
He sipped slowly.
Then picked up his phone.
There was a message from a hidden number:
Hajara: "She cried herself to sleep. Just thought you should know. Don't break her more than they already have."
Khalid stared at the screen.
Hajara was dangerous — too observant for his liking. But loyal to Sofia. And that, for now, made her tolerable.
He typed back: "I don't break what's already shattered. I rebuild it — stronger. If she lets me."
He didn't send it.
He deleted the message.
Instead, he dropped the phone on the glass table and leaned back into his armchair.
This wasn't just a game anymore.
This was war.
And he never entered a war he didn't intend to win.