The day our eyes met for the first time, everything changed.
It started with a storm.
The kind of rain that drowns streets and makes the city feel like a forgotten ghost.
I was late. The café was closing. My shoes were soaked, and my phone had died somewhere between work and the train that never came. I ducked into a quiet bar—small, dimly lit, almost empty. He was sitting at the far end, alone.
Black shirt. Rolled sleeves. A glass of something dark in his hand.
He didn't look up when I walked in.
But somehow, I felt him notice me. Like gravity shifting in the room. Like something ancient turning its head. I sat at the bar, a few stools away. Just trying to warm my hands. Just trying to disappear for a moment.
You look like the rain tried to drown you," he said, voice low, smooth. Russian accent. Slight, but unmistakable. I turned. Raised an eyebrow.
Do you talk to all strangers like this? or am I just lucky?
He smiled. Not wide. Just a flicker at the edge of his lips.
"I only talk to ghosts. And right now… you look like one." I should've left then.
But instead—I stayed. I let him buy me a drink. I let him ask me questions. I let myself feel something for the first time in months.
There was something in the way he looked at me. Like he already knew what I'd survived.
Like he wasn't afraid of my broken edges—because he had sharper ones of his own.
I didn't know his name until the end of the night.
"Adrien Vasilis," he said, slipping a card across the bar. "If you ever get tired of pretending you're fine… call me." I never meant to.
But I did.
Two weeks later. After everything fell apart. And now here I am. In his car. Running from people who want me dead.
And the only person I trust is the one man I should've never spoken to that night. The flash of memory faded as quickly as it came—his voice still echoing in my head.
"If you ever get tired of pretending you're fine…"
God, what a fool I'd been.
Not for calling him.
But for thinking I could walk away from whatever this was.
The car finally slowed, headlights slicing through the trees.
We were in the woods now—deep, far from the city, the air thick with silence.
Adrien pulled in front of a long, abandoned-looking cabin with a rusted gate and a gravel path that crunched under the tires. "This is it?" I asked quietly.
"For now," he said, killing the engine.
He got out first, scanning the area like a wolf scenting danger. Hand never straying far from his gun.
I stepped out slowly. My legs were stiff, my heart heavier than it should've been.
The cabin was old but solid. Secluded. The kind of place no one would find unless they were meant to.
Or unless someone betrayed us.
Inside, it smelled like dust and pine. He flicked on a small lamp in the corner—soft golden light pooling over wood and shadows.
Adrien turned to me, finally letting the silence between us settle.
"You'll be safe here," he said. His voice was low, but something in it cracked. Just barely.
I nodded, swallowing hard. "You've done enough. You didn't have to take me with you."
He moved closer—too close. The kind of close that made it hard to breathe, hard to think.
"I told you," he said, eyes locked on mine. "I protect what's mine." "But I'm not yours, Adrien."
My voice came out like a whisper, but it was the loudest truth I'd ever said. He didn't flinch. Just stepped in even closer, until there was barely an inch between us.
His breath brushed my cheek. His voice, rough and cracked open: "Then tell me to let you go."
My heart slammed against my ribs. My lips parted—
But nothing came out.
Because I couldn't. And he knew it.
I didn't answer him.
I couldn't.
Because the truth was—I didn't want him to let me go.
Not now.
Not when I had finally seen the cracks in his armor. Not when I had felt, for the first time, what it was like to be wanted not as a trophy… but as something fragile and rare.
Adrien Vasilis looked at me like I was a secret he'd burn the world to keep.
"Selene…" he murmured, and the way he said my name—like it hurt him—made my chest tighten.
His fingers brushed a strand of hair from my face. "I don't care what you tell me," he whispered, voice low and dangerous. "Your eyes are begging me not to stop."
He leaned in. Slowly. Intentionally.
My breath caught. And in that moment—nothing else existed.
But then— His phone rang.
Adrien froze. His jaw tensed, his entire presence shifting like a storm being pulled back behind a wall of iron. He glanced at the screen. I saw the name before he answered.
I turned away, trying to slow the pounding in my chest. My eyes wandered around the cabin—until something caught my attention.
A door. Slightly ajar.
I stepped toward it, curious. Slowly, I pushed it open. And stopped breathing.
Marble. Chandeliers. Velvet curtains. Polished gold.
It wasn't a cabin. It was a hidden palace.