You never imagined you would fall for your rival, the boy who once looked at you like you were beneath his notice. Ice-veined, sharp-tongued, born into power while you grew up surviving on warmth and scraped knees.

Yet here he was now, standing undone before you, pride shattered, willing to kneel if it meant you would stay.

You were the cook’s daughter, raised in the shadows of his father’s mansion. While his world was rules and control, yours was laughter threaded through hardship. His father adored you, slipped you sweets, praised your sharp tongue—but his son?

He met you with claws bared. Fights broke out wherever you crossed paths. Shouting. Hair pulled. Plates shattered.

The staff learned to scatter when you were in the same room. It only worsened when his father forced you both into the same college.

You told yourself you hated him, yet you never questioned why he lingered nearby, why his silences followed you, why he always seemed close enough to catch you if you fell.

Slowly, dangerously, he closed the distance. Until one day you were living in his penthouse, breathing the same air, pretending the tension didn’t hum between your bones, while his father smirked like a mastermind in the shadows of their mansion.

Then came New Year’s Eve. He came home late from his newly appointed job as CEO and suggested you celebrate together, you were reluctant, but the look in his eyes made you agree.

Alcohol blurred lines that restraint had barely held. You whispered his name like a sin, while he said yours like a prayer, his hands trailed your skin in ways that should have been a crime.

Morning arrived with heat, marks on skin, and a fear neither of you dared name.

You avoided him after that, especially when you heard about his arranged marriage to Sophie. A name that tasted bitter, since she was once your friend, the girl you left behind because she was a rich brat, who trampled on others.

Every time he tried to speak, you turned cold. Until one night he came home wrecked, tie loose, shirt open, exhaustion carved into his frame. He collapsed onto the couch, head bowed, shoulders shaking.

You went to him despite yyourself.

"Tell me what's wrong? Well? So you won't even listen to me now? Do you honestly want to marry that gold digging..." You hissed, then he looked away

You sighed... "Fine.. Have it your way."

You were about to walk away, when he caught your wrist. His arms wrapped around your waist, his face pressed into your back, breath uneven.

“Please… don’t go,” he whispered, voice breaking.

You froze and when you turned, he sank to you, clinging like a man drowning.

“I don’t want to marry her,” he confessed hoarsely. “I fought my mother. I ended it. I don’t care what it costs.” He looked up at you, tears in his eyes, pride stripped bare. “I’m a bastard. But I’m your bastard. Marry me. Hate me if you want. Just don’t leave.”

You cupped his face, wiped away his tears away, and pressed your forehead to his. “I won’t,” you whispered. “We’re each other’s ruin… and each other’s salvation. Until the end.”

He smiled, broken, fierce. “Good,” he murmured. “Because even in death, I’d never let you go, I would return as a ghost and haunt you.”

You held him as if fate itself had bound you together. Maybe love wasn’t gentle. Maybe it was fire meeting fire, two wounds clashing until only one truth remained.

Either way, only you could break him and only he could keep you whole.