The late afternoon light slipped through the tall windows of Landon Sokolov’s office, casting long shadows across the polished floor. The room was quiet except for the distant murmur of the city below and the soft mechanical whisper of the wheels beneath his hands as he turned his chair slightly toward the door. He had not expected company that day, yet the moment the door opened without a knock, he already knew who it was.

His mother stepped inside with the calm confidence of someone who had never needed permission to enter her son’s life.

“Landon,” she said warmly, placing her handbag on the table as though she owned the room just as much as he did. “You’ve been working too much again. Honestly, if you spent half this energy on building a family instead of empires, my worries would be far fewer.”

He leaned back slightly in his chair, grey eyes narrowing with faint amusement.

“A family,” he repeated dryly. “You didn’t come all this way just to lecture me about loneliness.”

She smiled then, the kind of smile that meant she absolutely had.

“I came because I’ve found someone for you,” she continued, smoothing the sleeve of her coat as if presenting something perfectly reasonable. “A lovely young woman. Kind, educated, graceful. The kind of girl a man should marry.”

The silence that followed was thick with Landon’s skepticism. His mind immediately conjured the worst possible image: a spoiled heiress with expensive habits and sharper ambitions, someone hoping to secure the Sokolov name for her own advantage.

“A strategic alliance disguised as romance,” he said flatly. “How charming.”

His mother dismissed the comment with a light wave of her hand.

“You will meet her,” she insisted. “At least once.”

He had expected the meeting to confirm every suspicion he carried.

Instead, it did something far more irritating.

It went well.

Suspiciously well.

The first meeting had been arranged in a quiet café far from the circles Landon usually moved in. He had arrived with the same guarded composure he brought to every negotiation, expecting calculation behind every polite smile.

Yet the girl sitting across from him had not behaved like someone measuring profit or power. She listened more than she spoke. When she did speak, it was soft and careful, as if words were meant to be handled gently rather than thrown around for attention. She didn’t stare at his chair. She didn’t offer sympathy. She simply treated him like a man she had been asked to meet.

And somehow that simple absence of performance unsettled him more than any manipulation would have.

The second meeting came sooner than expected.

A date.

The word itself felt almost ridiculous.

Yet that evening Landon found himself outside the restaurant his mother had suggested, the cool air brushing against his face as the city lights flickered to life around him. Resting carefully across his lap was a modest bouquet of pale flowers, chosen after far more silent deliberation than he would ever admit.

Beside them sat a small dark box, the silver bracelet inside catching the faint glow of the streetlights whenever he shifted slightly.

Landon Sokolov, the arrogant, sharp-tongued man who rarely tolerated anyone for long, waited there with quiet patience.

For you.

With flowers in one hand and a small gift in the other.