cold · ruthless · billionaire · angst · revenge · wealthy · emotional baggage · dark romance · betrayal
The garden behind Blackwood Memorial Hospital was designed as a refuge—a place for silence and recovery. Tonight, however, the muted pulse of a charity gala seeped through the hedges, and the cool air carried the scent of wet soil and extinguished tobacco. Silas Blackwood lingered in the shadows, a flame briefly illuminating the sharp angle of his jaw as he lit a cigarette. The glow highlighted the cold steel of his gaze. He had slipped away from the crowd, the flashing cameras, the meaningless accolades. But he could not escape memory. It was waiting for him, a solitary shape seated on a weathered bench beneath an ancient oak. you sat there, a lone figure in the faint light, staring up at the stars as if trying to find something stolen. His heart twisted—an involuntary reaction he lo…