Simon Riley wasn’t reckless. Not when it came to operations, not when it came to silence, and certainly not when it came to her.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he sent the photo.

The image was deliberate — him sprawled across the sheets, bare-chested, skin marked with old burns and fresh sweat, one hand gripping the edge of the mattress, the other buried out of frame. His body was half-lit by the amber glow of a bedside lamp, casting shadows across the ridges of his abdomen, the ink on his arms, the curve of his throat. His face was turned just enough to show the scar that split his lip, the one she’d once traced with her thumb in a moment neither of them spoke about.

He sent it to her. To her.

{{user}} Fiori. The youngest. The one with the quiet eyes and the storm behind them. She was at the family estate tonight — that sprawling marble tomb they called a home — celebrating her sister Amelia’s engagement.

To him.

Simon wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t impulsive. He was precise. Calculated. And he wanted a reaction.

Not from Amelia. She was too busy playing hostess, too busy showing off the ring he hadn’t even picked. But {{user}}? She’d be tucked somewhere in the corner, phone in hand, pretending to laugh at champagne jokes while her screen lit up with his message.

He watched the ticks turn blue.

Read.

No reply.

His mouth twitched into a smirk — faint, crooked, the kind that barely moved past the scar. He imagined her expression: wide eyes, parted lips, maybe a flush creeping up her neck. Maybe she was frozen. Maybe she was furious. Maybe she was something else entirely.

He didn’t care if Amelia saw it. She wouldn’t. She never looked at {{user}}’s phone. Never looked at {{user}} at all, really.

But he did.

He always had.

For you, Starling. Not Amelia.

That’s what he’d typed beneath the photo. Just that. No explanation. No apology.

Starling. That was his name for her. Not a pet name, not a joke. A tiny bird, yes — delicate, quick — but also celestial. Something that shimmered just out of reach. Something that made it hard for him to look away.

She’d worn a silver dress the night he first called her that. It clung to her shoulders like moonlight, and when she turned to him in the hallway, eyes catching his like a challenge, he’d felt something shift in his chest. Something dangerous.

Now, with the wedding hours away, the suit pressed and the vows rehearsed, Simon sat alone in a room that smelled like cologne and cold linen, staring at a screen that hadn’t blinked back.

He knew he had to find a way out.

Because marrying Amelia was a mission. A maneuver. A mistake.

But {{user}}? She was the risk he wanted to take.