Chapter 1
He didn't fear danger.
He feared what she did to his control.
Bang.
The sound split through the room before the pain even registered.
Raiyan stared at the dent in the wall like it had personally betrayed him.
Dust drifted in slow motion, catching the dim light. A second later, his knuckles burned—skin split, blood warm and bright. He welcomed it. The sting was grounding. Simple. Clearer than whatever was tearing through his chest.
He pressed his palm flat against the wall.
Didn't turn around.
Behind him, the room was eerily silent. Not calm—compressed. Like someone had shut the world into a smaller box and locked it.
Her dress lay crumpled on the floor. His shirt had been discarded somewhere near the bed. The sheets were twisted, pillows displaced, everything frozen at the exact moment control had slipped through his fingers.
Raiyan didn't look back.
If he did, he wasn't sure he'd survive it.
He was not a man who lost control. He built companies on restraint. Negotiated power through silence. Calculated every move before making it.
Tonight, calculation had failed him.
A soft shift behind him—barely a sound. Fabric. A footstep. Then her voice.
"Let me go."
No anger.
No trembling.
Just final.
That was what broke him.
He could have handled shouting. He would have known what to do with rage. Desperation was familiar territory.
Indifference was not.
Indifference was clean. It didn't beg. It didn't argue. It didn't fight for space.
It left.
Raiyan's jaw set. His hand stayed against the wall like it belonged there. Like removing it would take the last thin thread of control with it.
He heard her move again—slowly, deliberately. Not rushing. Not dramatic. Just... done.
That should've made him furious.
Instead, it made his chest feel too tight to breathe properly.
His keys were on the dresser. He crossed the room fast, grabbed them, snatched his jacket from the chair.
He still didn't look at her.
Because if he saw her face—if he saw even a flicker of anything he could mistake as pity—he would do something worse than punch a wall.
He reached the door.
Her voice came again, quieter this time.
"Raiyan."
He stopped.
Not because he wanted to.
Because his body was disloyal.
He didn't turn. Didn't answer.
The silence stretched between them like a wire.
Then she said it. Calm. Controlled.
"You don't get to punish me for your loss of control."
His throat went dry. He hated that she was right. He hated that she could say it without shaking.
The anger was still there. Hot. Ugly. It just had nowhere to land without breaking something else.
He opened the door and walked out.
The hallway was colder than the room. The house felt too big, too quiet, like it was holding its breath.
He took the stairs two at a time.
The car was parked outside, dark against the night. He slid into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut, and sat there for a second too long.
He didn't start the engine.
He didn't move.
His hands were still bleeding. He didn't wipe them. Didn't care.
This wasn't loss.
He understood loss.
This felt like something had been taken from him while he stood there believing he was still in control.
His elbows dropped onto the steering wheel. His forehead followed, pressing into his knuckles like pressure could rearrange the night into something livable.
And his mind—traitor that it was—betrayed him.
Not with the argument.
Not with her voice.
With her face.
Large hazel-brown eyes lifting to his, steady and unafraid. Too observant. Too calm for someone who should have been flustered.
There was a glow to her skin. Not makeup. Not effort. Just there. Like harsh lights adjusted instead of the other way around.
And her smile—
Not sweet. Not innocent.
Enigmatic. Like she already knew something about him he hadn't figured out yet.
He swallowed hard. His hand tightened on the steering wheel.
His phone buzzed.
He ignored it.
Buzz again.
He still ignored it.
Then the screen lit up with a name that had no right to exist in his head right now.
Evan. Calling.
Raiyan stared at it like the phone was mocking him.
The buzz stopped.
A second later—another vibration. Different pattern. A message preview flashed before he could stop it.
Elena: Where are you?
Raiyan's jaw clenched.
The only person he wanted to ask that question tonight was the one he'd left upstairs.
And he didn't.
Because he couldn't.
Because if he did, he'd have to admit he wanted her to stop being final.
He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
It lit up again. Evan.
Still calling.
Raiyan didn't answer.
He started the engine.
And drove off like speed could drown out the sound of her silence.
But even as the car pulled away, one truth settled cold and certain in his chest—
He hadn't been prepared for her.
And tonight proved what that kind of mistake cost.
⸻
Two Months Earlier
Heathrow — Private Terminal
The private terminal smelled like polished floors and quiet money and people who never stood in lines.
Raiyan moved through it with his phone in hand, attention split in a way he didn't allow often. A legal update. A contract revision. A timeline that refused to behave.
Evan's voice was in his ear through the call.
"Say yes or no, Raiyan. Stop doing the thing where you stare at a problem until it confesses."
"I'm reading," Raiyan said.
"You're brooding."
"I don't brood."
"You absolutely brood. You just call it thinking."
Raiyan didn't respond, because he didn't need to. Evan would talk anyway.
"I'm telling you," Evan continued, "if you disappear during the board call again, I will start telling people you've taken a vow of silence."
Raiyan's mouth twitched, barely. "Try it."
"Oh, I will. Also—"
Evan's sentence cut off.
So did Raiyan's movement.
Because a body collided with his.
Hard enough to jolt the phone in his hand.
Cold liquid splashed across his chest. A cup tipped. Ice scattered. Coffee bloomed across white fabric like an insult.
Drip.
Drip.
Raiyan froze.
That didn't happen to him.
His gaze lifted, irritation already sharpening—then stopped.
The woman in front of him froze too.
Not panicked.
Not apologetic the way people usually were when they bumped into him.
She looked annoyed.
At the coffee. At the situation. Like the universe had inconvenienced her personally.
"Oh no," she murmured, blinking once. Then again. "No."
Then, like she remembered the rules of being a decent human, she added, "I'm sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going."
She stepped closer without hesitation.
Too close.
She pulled a handkerchief from her bag and started dabbing at his shirt like this was a problem she intended to fix.
That was when Raiyan reacted.
His hand closed around her wrist.
Not rough.
Immediate.
Controlled.
Her hand stilled.
The terminal went quieter in Raiyan's head—the way it always did when something crossed into his space uninvited.
He looked at her properly.
Long dark hair, slightly disobedient, strands slipping forward like restraint wasn't a rule it respected.
Small oval face. Wide expressive eyes, hazel-brown, sharp with intelligence.
No fear.
No fluster.
Just assessment.
She stared back at him like she wasn't trapped. Like she was deciding whether he was worth her time.
"I think," Raiyan said evenly, "you've done enough damage."
A beat.
Then her mouth curved.
Not a sweet smile.
A knowing one.
"...Are you always this dramatic," she asked calmly, "or did my coffee offend you personally?"
Evan's voice cut back in through the phone, faint and confused.
"Raiyan? Hello? Did someone die?"
Raiyan didn't answer him.
He couldn't.
Because something in his head shifted.
Because no one spoke to him like that.
Not strangers.
Not in public.
Not when his hand was around their wrist.
She didn't pull away immediately.
She simply looked at his hand, then back at his face, brows lifting slightly as if to say—are we doing this?
Raiyan realized, distantly, that he was still holding her.
He should let go.
He didn't.
"Let go," she said, not pleading.
Just stating.
Raiyan's grip loosened half a fraction.
"You're bleeding on my shirt," she added, glancing at his knuckles like it was her right to notice.
"I'm not bleeding," he said.
She looked directly at his hand. "You're bleeding."
It was such a simple correction.
It felt like a challenge.
Raiyan's jaw tightened. "Who are you?"
She tilted her head slightly. "A stranger you grabbed in an airport."
Evan, still on the phone: "I'm sorry—did you just grab someone?"
Raiyan didn't move. Didn't blink.
The woman's gaze flicked to the phone, then back to him. "Is your friend always this loud?"
"He's not my friend," Raiyan said automatically.
Evan: "Excuse me? I'm literally keeping your life together."
Her mouth curved again. "That's adorable."
Raiyan didn't know why that word hit him like a warning.
Adorable.
No one had ever called his life adorable.
She stepped back finally, smoothing her dress as if the collision was already finished in her mind.
Then she glanced at his stained shirt and made a small face. "You should change."
Raiyan stared. "Obviously."
She looked at him again—eyes too calm, too steady. "You say that like I'm the problem."
"You are," Raiyan said.
She nodded once as if she accepted that. "Okay."
Then she walked past him like she hadn't just wrecked his morning.
Like she hadn't just made him forget to breathe for a second.
Raiyan stood there, coffee-soaked, watching her disappear into the terminal crowd.
Evan's voice came sharper. "Raiyan. Who was that?"
Raiyan didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
And that should've been fine.
It wasn't.
⸻
Back in the car, two months later, Raiyan's hands tightened on the steering wheel as the memory resurfaced again—uninvited, vivid.
Her confidence.
The refusal to be intimidated.
The way she looked at him like he was just another man in her way.
Not a calculation.
Not a strategy.
An accident.
And somehow, the most dangerous one of his life.
Cold air hit his face through the vents like a slap. He dragged in a breath through his nose like that could fix anything.
His phone buzzed again.
Evan.
Then—another vibration. Different pattern.
Elena again.
Raiyan stared at the screen, and something ugly rose in his chest—because the only person he wanted to ask "Where are you?" was the one he'd left behind.
His mind went back—unwanted, sharp—to Zoya going still instead of meeting him. Like she didn't want his touch. Like she'd been somewhere else.
Was it him?
Or was it—
He cut the thought off so hard it made him feel sick.
He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat again.
The screen lit up: Evan. Still calling.
Raiyan didn't pick it up.
He drove faster.
And the last line chased him anyway, no matter how hard he pressed the accelerator—
He hadn't been prepared for her silence.
And now it was the only sound he couldn't outrun.