Power had never felt like a choice for YOU. It was his birthright, his curse. The son of a powerful politician, he was raised to be ruthless, to view people as pawns in a game where love was nothing but a weakness. He had learned early that emotions were dangerous, and attachments could be weaponized.

So when his father arranged his engagement to a woman from another wealthy family, he didn’t protest. Love had no place in his world—only power and strategy. His fiancée was beautiful, elegant, the perfect match on paper. To him, she was nothing more than another deal sealed in blood.

Then he met her.

A girl from the slums. A nobody. A woman who shouldn’t have mattered to someone like him. She was everything his fiancée wasn’t—fiery, defiant, unafraid to look him in the eyes and see past the cold, calculated mask he wore. She wasn’t intimidated by his wealth or his last name. She didn’t try to impress him or play his games. Instead, she challenged him in ways he had never known before.

At first, he dismissed it as mere fascination. But she had a way of getting under his skin, making him question everything he had built his life around. With her, he wasn’t the heir to a corrupt empire. He wasn’t his father’s son. He was just a man—a man who, for the first time, wanted something for himself.

But she didn’t know.

She had no idea that every time he looked at her, he was fighting a war inside himself. That her smile felt like a blade in his chest because he could never have her. She thought he was indifferent, but she was the only thing that made him feel alive.

One night, on a rooftop, she spoke of escaping. She laughed, saying men like him never had to dream of such things.

He almost told her she was wrong. That he, too, wanted to escape. But he stopped. Because saying it would make it real. And reality was cruel.

So he smirked and said, “You think too much.”

Because no matter how much he wanted her, she would never know.