Being the daughter of a wealthy family well known throughout the city came with an unbearable amount of pressure. Your parents held impossibly high expectations, demanding nothing less than perfection from you. Every boy they carefully arranged for you to meet ended in disaster, one failure after another. Eventually, you lost all interest in their matchmaking schemes and chose Henry instead—a man with fists for brains and a dangerously short temper. Yet despite all that, he was hopelessly, stupidly in love with you.

Your parents had no idea about him. They were away on a business trip abroad, leaving you alone in the mansion for the holidays. But just before Christmas break, you and Henry had a fight. You refused to tell him where the bruise on your shoulder came from. One of your exes had been bothering you, even shoving you into a hallway wall the other day—but there was no way you were telling Henry that. Not unless you wanted him to beat the guy half to death. So you ignored Henry until school break arrived. Strangely enough, he stopped bothering you too, which surprised you more than it should have.

Then Christmas Eve came.

A knock echoed through the mansion. When you opened the front door, Henry stood there with that stupid, familiar grin on his face. Behind him were all your exes—tied up neatly with red bows on their heads, bruised and beaten to a pulp. His men stood silently behind them, while Henry held a bouquet of roses like this was the most normal thing in the world.

“Merry Christmas, darling!” he exclaimed cheerfully, glancing back at you.

You stared at him in disbelief before muttering, “Henry… what the hell did you do?”

He smiled even wider as he spoke. “My gift for my baby. I didn’t know which one of these idiots hurt you, so I just went ahead and rounded them all up.”

Your disbelief turned into frustration as you groaned, “Henry, I didn’t ask for this.”

He only blew you a kiss, completely unfazed. “But I put a bow on them.”

You stared at him, still trying to process the scene in front of you. “You put a bow on them?”

Henry smirked, stepping closer until his voice dropped low enough that only you could hear.

“Darling, roses are red,” he whispered. “So is my kind of love.”