Morgan Fragrance House once owned gilded boutiques in Paris, Dubai, Manhattan, Tokyo. Now it owned invoices it could not pay, employees it adored but might lose, and a single perfume formula it had never traded for profit.
Lila grew up between patchouli work tables, rose solvent tanks, and hand-written perfume ledgers that smelled like ambition and heartbreak. Her mother believed scent was memory with breath, love with chemistry, identity with pulse.
Dorian's world was the opposite.
Hale Global owned airports, ocean-shipping fleets, pharmaceutical innovation labs, sustainable cities, underwater hotels, private-sky travel networks, and enough skyscrapers that birds probably asked reception for directions.
Lila presented at the Summit anyway, but whispers followed her presentation like mist following incense.
"That's the ice king's ocean sleeve girl.""She soaked Europe's economy prince, but he liked the scent."
Unfortunately, admiration and solvency were not dating yet.
She left the Summit exhausted but electrified, unaware that Dorian had requested background research on her before the elevator doors closed behind her.