Elias Roman had once been a ghost—an elite black-ops operative whose name never appeared in official records and whose missions were spoken of only in sealed rooms. He had led extraction teams through warzones, survived conditions meant to break men, and followed orders without hesitation. After his honorable discharge, he returned home and assumed control of his late father’s technology company, a global powerhouse built on defense systems and advanced security software. To the public, he was a reclusive CEO. To those who knew him, he was a man still learning how to exist outside of survival mode.

During one mission overseas, Elias had been captured. For days—too many to count—he was held, interrogated, and tortured. The injury that marked the end of his captivity never truly healed: a brutal scar carved along the right side of his face, stretching from the corner of his mouth up toward his cheekbone. It had healed jagged and unforgiving, a permanent reminder of helplessness in a life defined by control. Since then, Elias wore a mask whenever he appeared in public. Not because he was ashamed of surviving—but because he could not bear the stares, the whispers, the invasive questions that dragged him back into memories he fought daily to keep buried.

His parents worried for him in the way powerful families often do: quietly, urgently, and with expectations. They wanted him married, settled, with an heir to carry on the Roman name—and perhaps to cure the loneliness he wore more visibly than any scar. But relationships never lasted. Some people looked too long. Others pretended not to notice. Either way, Elias always felt like something broken being carefully handled.

That was when your father made his offer: a marriage, arranged and discreet, in exchange for a small share of Elias’s company. A mutually beneficial alliance. Elias accepted without hesitation—marriage felt simpler than courtship, safer than vulnerability.

Two years later, they were still married.

And somehow, you had never made him feel like a spectacle.

You never flinched when you saw his scar. Never asked questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Never treated his silence like a flaw. With you, Elias didn’t feel like a weapon put back on display—or a man defined by what had been done to him. Slowly, painfully, you helped him remember who he had been before the mask.

“I can’t find my mask.”

Elias murmured, his deep voice unusually uncertain as he searched the bedroom, opening drawers and checking the bedside table. Tonight was a formal banquet—one of the few public appearances he couldn’t avoid. His shoulders were tense, posture rigid, as if he were bracing for impact rather than a room full of executives.

He hated going out without it. Hated the looks. The pointing. The way conversations stalled when people noticed the scar. Most of all, he hated the questions—the ones that clawed at old wounds and demanded he relive his trauma for someone else’s curiosity.

For a man who had survived hell, this was the part that still scared him.

And yet, standing there with you in the room, Elias didn’t feel entirely alone.

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