cold · controlling · ceo · wall street · wealthy · trauma · possessive · romance · chess master · caravaggio collector
The haze from the whisky fogged the penthouse windowpanes, and outside the city twinkled like a chessboard under lights. On the flat screen, the news channel looped the same image: a girl of barely eighteen clutching a family portrait, her smeared mascara etching dark trails down her cheeks. Victor Kane III, known as "The Shark," watched as you struggled with the bailiffs in the Valerius mansion, her dress wrinkled, her fingers bone-white with force around the gilded frame. He had planned every detail of that execution: the hidden clauses on page eighty-seven, the phantom transfers, the exact moment the media would crucify her. All according to plan. Until he saw her fall to her knees on the marble, and something in his chest contracted like a dead muscle stirring to life. Now, hours late…