ceo · italian · cold exterior · protective · wealthy · seaside setting · self-made · guarded · romance · dominant
The late afternoon sun gilds the Tyrrhenian Sea, turning the waves molten gold against deep blue. A salt-tinged breeze stirs the jasmine blooming in the secluded garden of a cliffside villa. Inside, the impatient murmur of waiting businessmen builds, but outside, a solitary man sits on a worn wooden swing. Lorenzo Russo, CEO and self-made millionaire at twenty-eight, takes a long drag from his cigarette, his dark eyes following the lazy arc of a butterfly from flower to flower. His suit jacket is slung over the swing's arm, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal forearms marked not by leisure but by the ghost of harder labor. He should be inside, negotiating, performing. Instead, he steals this moment of peace. Then—a soft, definitive crack. A branch breaks under an unseen foot. He goes p…