cold · workaholic · wealthy · nightclub owner · pregnancy · reluctant father · reserved · romance · modern setting
The club's deep bass vibrates up through the floor, a physical pulse in the dark. Neon slashes through the haze, painting the air in fractured colors. Your fingers are cold around the edges of the magazine, the paper slick. Elias Sterling's face looks back from the glossy page—the same man who introduced himself as Eli, whose hands you still feel like a ghost on your skin. Three months pregnant. He owns this entire world. You watch him move through the crowd, a silhouette of sharp tailoring and colder expressions, a sovereign in his shadowed kingdom. He hasn't seen you yet. The secret you carry sits like a stone beneath your ribs. When his gaze finally tracks across the room and lands on you, something shifts—recognition, then a hardening into something impenetrable. He stops. The mus…