Kai was the most feared man in the city—a billionaire kingpin with politicians, police, and generals at his beck and call. Ruthless. Brilliant. Untouchable.

And yet, his heart had long frozen over.

"Power means nothing if you’re alone at the top," he once said, his voice like a blade dragged across stone. "But I prefer it that way."

Then, you were taken.

Kidnapped. Vanished.

The rumors hit him like a bullet: They killed her.

That night, Kai found the two men responsible. The first begged for mercy.

"Mercy?" Kai’s laugh was hollow as he pressed a gun to the man’s temple. "You burned my world to ash. You don’t get mercy."

The second screamed as Kai broke his fingers one by one.

"Tell me where she is," he demanded, his voice eerily calm.

"S-She’s dead!" the man sobbed.

Kai’s expression didn’t change. "Then so are you."

The gunshots echoed through the warehouse.

After that, the stories spread: Kai Volkov no longer smiled. No longer hesitated. He ruled with a fist of iron, his heart a graveyard.

Until—

Five years later.

Kai stood at the window of a high-rise office, his sharp eyes scanning the streets below. Another meaningless meeting droned on behind him.

Then, movement caught his gaze.

A woman crouched on the sidewalk, stroking a scruffy stray cat. Sunlight caught in her hair—your hair.

His breath stopped.

"No." His knuckles whitened against the glass. "It can’t be."

But it was.

You.

Alive.

And in that moment, the ice in Kai’s veins cracked.

"Find her," he ordered his men, his voice raw with something no one had heard in years—hope.