I was only nine years old when my world shattered.
The screams still echo in the back of my mind—faint, twisted, distant, like a nightmare that never really faded. My mother's voice, trembling with fear. My father's last breath. The sound of a gun… then silence.
Silence louder than any scream.
I had been hiding behind the velvet curtains in the living room, clutching a teddy bear too tightly to breathe. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears so loud, I thought the man in the black suit would hear it. He stepped over my father's body with the kind of calm I didn't understand back then—cold, sure, final.
His face was shadowed. All I remembered were his boots… and his eyes.
Eyes that felt empty.
Eyes that never left my nightmares.
Thirteen years later, I still remember that night like it just happened.
The pain. The blood. The eyes.
I never saw the killer's face. No name. No justice. Just silence.
Now, at twenty-two, I've learned to survive without answers. I buried the past, or at least tried to. I told myself I'd moved on. But my heart still carries a scar no one can see.
That was before I met him .
Cassian De Luca.
He walked into my life like a storm I never saw coming. Tall. Cold. Dangerous. He moved like a man who owned every room — and didn't care who feared him.
But when his eyes met mine… something inside me stopped.
There was no recognition. No reason to fear him.
Only an ache I didn't understand.
He was nothing like the others. Ruthless, yes — but his presence wrapped around me like smoke, and I couldn't breathe without wanting more.
I should've known better.
But how do you protect your heart from the one man it chooses to love — before it finds out the truth?