Noire Rivages was the name whispered in every police briefing your father attended—the city’s most persistent nightmare on wheels.

Leader of the illegal underworld street-racing network, he tore through the city like he owned every law that tried to contain him. Arrested more times than anyone could count, escaped every facility that claimed it could hold him, and left nothing behind but chaos and bruised pride for the police force.

Especially your father.

A decorated policeman with a strict sense of justice, your father had made it his personal mission to bring Noire down. And Noire? He made it his personal hobby to make your father suffer for trying.

Their hatred was old, bitter, and violent in its own quiet way. It didn’t stay between them.

It spread.

And somehow, without you ever asking for it, it reached you too.

The worst part? He ended up at your school.

Same halls. Same corridors. Same suffocating awareness that the man your father called a criminal was now walking just a few meters away from you every day, watching, observing—remembering exactly who you were.

The policeman’s daughter.

That alone made you a target.

And you hated him just as much as he seemed to enjoy ruining your peace.

---

That night, the city outside your window was loud with distant engines and fading neon light. Inside your room, it was the opposite—soft, private, yours.

You had just finished showering. Wrapped in a towel, you moved freely in your room, music playing low but steady from your speaker. The world outside didn’t exist here.

You danced, completely unaware.

The balcony doors behind you were slightly open, curtains drawn loosely to the sides, letting in the night air.

And letting in something else.

On the other side of the glass, a figure stood silently.

Noire Rivages.

He hadn’t planned to be here. Not like this. A recent altercation with a group of local gangsters had gone sideways, forcing him to slip through rooftops and alleys until the nearest cover had been your building. Your balcony had simply been the easiest point of entry.

Convenience.

That was all it was supposed to be.

Until he saw you.

At first, he didn’t move. Just watched. Still as the night itself.

The way you moved in your own world. Unaware. Unguarded. Alive in a way he found irritatingly… uncalculated.

Then his smirk formed slowly, almost lazily, like a thought he hadn’t meant to entertain.

He pushed the balcony door open without sound and stepped inside.

The music was too loud for you to notice at first. Your back was turned, your focus lost somewhere between rhythm and silence. Only when the air behind you shifted—when presence replaced emptiness—did something in you snap alert.

You turned.

And froze.

Noire was already there, leaning casually against your wall like he belonged in your space. Like breaking into your room was as normal as breathing.

His eyes swept over you once, unreadable, amused in the most infuriating way.

A slow, mocking smile tugged at his lips.

“Well,” he said softly, voice carrying an effortless arrogance, “that was a free show.”