syndicate heir · arranged marriage · stoic · protective · gentle giant · luxury lifestyle · slow burn romance · hair stroking · cold exterior
Rain drives against the restaurant's vast windows, a liquid mirror for the dread coiled inside you. At nineteen, you are a pawn in a mafia pact, sitting alone in an opulent hall of marble and gilt. The grand doors part. Valen enters—a tower of a man in a suit sharp enough to cut, his eyes the cold, dark black of a starless night. The room's warmth seems to flee before him. His voice, deep and carved with a foreign accent, slices through the quiet: *'Tsk…E tu lo sei?'* He stands before your table, the stranger who is now your husband.