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Passion and Rose
Chapter One
The study was quiet, dimly lit by the amber glow of the evening sun filtering through tall glass windows. Dust motes danced lazily in the air, catching the light, as if time itself had slowed. Behind the massive oak desk, Adrian Veylor sat with his broad frame leaned back in the leather chair, his hand resting against his temple.
On the desk before him lay a small wooden box, weathered from age. He had not touched it in years, and yet, tonight, he had felt compelled to open it. Inside were photographs—faded, delicate, each one a captured fragment of a past he had tried, and failed, to bury.
His fingers, strong yet careful, brushed over the top photograph. Kailah.
She was barely five years old in the picture, standing in his family's garden, her small hands gripping a rose that was far too large for her tiny fingers. Her cheeks were flushed with sunlight, her eyes wide with innocence as she smiled shyly at the camera. He remembered the day clearly. She had insisted the rose was hers, that it belonged to her because he had given it. He had laughed back then—a rare thing—and tucked another rose behind her ear.
Adrian's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. His heart, a thing the world believed frozen, tightened painfully.
The next picture showed her perched on the stone bench in his grandfather's courtyard. She had been staring at him, not the camera, her gaze fixed and stubborn as though nothing else in the world existed but him. Even then, she had that unshakable focus, as if she had chosen him before she even knew what choosing meant.
Adrian leaned back, exhaling slowly. His mind drifted—
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Their grandparents had been friends, bound by an old promise of loyalty and blood. While the adults spoke of business and alliances, Adrian and Kailah had been left to the gardens, the wide hallways, the summer afternoons. She was five, he twelve—too young to understand why she clung to him so tightly, too old to ignore the strange weight of her words.
"Adrian," she had whispered one day, her tiny hands tugging at his sleeve, her eyes bright with unshakable determination. "When I grow up, I'll marry you. Promise me."
He had looked down at her, bemused, irritated even. What did a child know of marriage? Of promises? Yet the way she had looked at him, waiting for his answer with her small heart wide open, had done something to him. Against reason, against sense, he had nodded.
"I promise."
Two words. A careless vow. Yet they had bound him tighter than chains.
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He lifted another photo. Kailah at ten, twirling in a white summer dress in his grandmother's garden, chasing butterflies while he sat under the tree, pretending to read. But he hadn't been reading. He had been watching her, always watching, his chest tight with an emotion he couldn't name back then.
The world thought Adrian Veylor incapable of love. They said he hated women, that he saw them as weak, unworthy. And perhaps it was true—he had no space in his heart for anyone. No one but her.
Kailah. His Rose.
But now, at seventeen, she no longer looked at him with the wide-eyed certainty of a child. She looked elsewhere. At someone else.
Nicholas Hale.
The name tasted bitter. Adrian's jaw tightened, his hand curling into a fist on the desk. He had seen the boy lingering near her at school, had seen the way Kailah's eyes softened, her lips curved. She smiled for Nicholas in a way she had once smiled only for him. And Nicholas—Adrian's eyes darkened—Nicholas wasn't blind to what she was worth.
A sharp knock at the door broke his reverie.
"Come in," Adrian said, his voice deep, commanding, yet edged with restrained fury.
It was Marcus, his long-time attendant. "Sir, the car is ready. You asked to be informed when Kailah's school ended for the day."
Adrian's gaze fell once more on the photograph in his hand—the little girl with the rose. Then he placed it back carefully, almost reverently, and closed the box.
"I'll see her myself," he said, rising to his full height, his shadow stretching long across the room.
As he left the study, his steps were heavy with purpose. Kailah might not remember the promise she had demanded from him, but Adrian had never forgotten. And if Nicholas Hale thought he could steal what was his, he was about to learn just how ruthless Adrian Veylor could be.
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