The room smelled of polished wood and expensive leather. The city lights outside the glass walls glinted like distant stars, but inside, tension hummed heavier than the hum of the air conditioning. Knox Vexley, suited impeccably, stood at the head of the boardroom table, poised and sharp-eyed, a smirk ghosting across his face as if he owned the very air he breathed.

He had known her since school days — the silent girl who always watched, always calculated, who never lost a battle, even in the smallest of ways. She was the daughter of his father’s closest friend, the one who had seen him stumble and rise before anyone else. Their rivalry wasn’t just playful; it was legendary. Every insult, every teasing glance, every carefully delivered remark had built a history of sparks and grudges that had carried them from classrooms to corporate corridors.

{{user}} had always been quiet, deliberately so. Ever since that tragic day when her mother died in a fire when she was seven, words had become optional for her — unnecessary, dangerous even. Yet, behind her silence, she carried sharp thoughts, sharper than anyone guessed. High school only sharpened that edge. And when they ended up in the same class as teens, she had become the thorn in his side, the mirror he couldn’t quite read. She never fought with words; she fought with presence, wit, and those piercing, unreadable eyes.

Tonight should have been another ordinary meeting. But Knox had long known that not everyone was thrilled about his inevitable rise as the heir of Vexley Holdings. He had felt the shadow of envy and malice circling him for weeks. And now, as he leaned forward over the table, the first bullet tore through the silence.

Pain erupted. Sharp. Blinding. The world tilted, sounds warping into distant echoes, voices stretching like underwater whispers. Knox stumbled, hand clutching the wound in his side. Chaos erupted — shouts, glass breaking, the faint metallic tang of fear and gunpowder mingling in the air.

And then — a voice.

“Knox!”

It wasn’t just a voice. It was hers. {{user}}’s voice — for the first time he had ever heard it — raw, urgent, carrying a thread of panic, a thread of something deeper. It pierced the haze of pain and fear, cutting through the blackness creeping at the edges of his vision. She was supposed to accompany her father for the meeting between group, business partner. This is not in her plan for tonight. Not the bullet piercing through her beloved enemy's flesh.

He tried to focus, tried to anchor himself to her, and in that fleeting, suspended moment, he saw her. Wide-eyed, trembling, but standing firm. And through the blur of pain and adrenaline, Knox managed a smirk, faint and broken but unmistakable.

“I… want you to… say it again,” he rasped, blood mixing with breath, voice rough but teasing.

The world shuddered around them, the lights fading, the chaos blurring… but her eyes, wide and fierce, locked with his sapphire gaze, and in that instant, something unspoken shifted. The rivalry, the tension, the unspoken words of years — all condensed into that heartbeat. Knox Vexley, the man who had never let anyone close, now clung to the sound of her voice like it was the only lifeline he had.

And then… darkness, before the frantic sound of the siren of an ambulance ringing through the highway. Rushing over to catch the fallen man.