Aryan Raichand. The name is enough to silence a boardroom. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t raise his voice—he lowers expectations. Cold. Calculating. A legacy wrapped in Armani and bloodless ambition. He doesn't blink when firing someone with twenty years in his company. He doesn’t flinch when tearing apart billion-dollar mergers just because the numbers weren’t perfect.

And of course, there was a girl.

Sunshine girl. Poor. Sweet. Always spilling coffee, always smiling too much. The kind you expect him to fall for. The kind who says things like "You don’t need to be so angry all the time." The kind who makes him remember his mother’s warmth, his childhood, his buried humanity.

Except.

He doesn’t fall for her.

He falls for you.

The woman sitting across him in boardrooms. The one with ice in her veins and war in her eyes. The one who doesn’t laugh at his dry remarks. Who doesn’t care for his money. Who doesn’t flinch when he tries to intimidate her. Who built her father’s crumbling empire back from ash with blood under her nails and an iron spine.

You're not poor. You're not warm. And you sure as hell aren't sunshine.

You're fire contained in a glass box. Controlled. Dangerous. And you hate him.

They’ve hated each other for years. Competing in silence. Smiling politely at galas while poisoning each other in deals.

Until, Aryan was sabotaged.

He stands at the head of the boardroom table, sleeves rolled, tie forgotten on the floor. A half-finished whisky sits untouched beside him. The deal didn’t go through. The numbers were off. Someone leaked.

He knows who.

"Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?" he says, voice low, almost casual. Too calm. The kind of calm that means someone’s about to get metaphorically buried.