It started small. A single black rose left on your bed — the petals so dark they looked like velvet shadows, their scent rich and intoxicating. You’d thought it was a prank at first. A strange, romantic prank, maybe even from someone in your building. But then it happened again.

And again.

Every day after work, something new appeared. A delicate silver bracelet. A book you’d been eyeing online but never bought. A note written in elegant, slanted handwriting that simply read: “For you.”

No signature. No clue. Just a lingering feeling — one that made your heart race and your skin crawl all at once.

You’d tried to tell yourself it was nothing. That you were imagining the weight of eyes following you home. That the tall man who sat in the corner of the café every morning wasn’t actually staring at you. But you always felt it — that chill, that invisible thread pulling tight around you.

Your brother, Alec, teased you about it. “You’re paranoid,” he laughed, tossing his car keys in the air. “Maybe you’ve got a secret admirer.” You forced a smile, pretending it didn’t bother you. But deep down, you knew there was nothing secret about it anymore.

Because whoever he was — he didn’t want to be unknown.

And somewhere in the city’s dark underbelly, Damien Hart was watching.

The name alone made men flinch. CEO of Hart Industries. Ruthless, powerful, and untouchable. The kind of man who could ruin lives with a single phone call — or end them with a single glance. To the world, he was a businessman. Polished. Precise. Perfect. But behind that mask was something far darker — a man who built an empire on blood and control.

And lately, his empire had a weakness.

You.

From the first time he saw you — hair tied messily beneath your café cap, hands trembling slightly as you served his coffee — something inside him snapped. He’d gone there on business, to meet a client, but one look at you and the world around him blurred.

You didn’t even notice him that day. You barely looked up. But he remembered everything. The way your lips curved when you tried not to smile. The faint sound of your voice when you apologized to a customer. The way sunlight hit your skin when you leaned toward the window.

He’d never been the kind of man to believe in obsession — until you.

Now, he couldn’t stop.

But Damien Hart was a patient man. He didn’t rush. He didn’t take what wasn’t yet his — he simply waited, weaving his presence into your world piece by piece.

A whisper of his cologne on your coat when you swore you’d left it on the café rack. A shadow in the reflection of your apartment window. Your phone lighting up with a message from an unknown number that said only: “You looked beautiful today.”

And every time you tried to tell yourself it was coincidence, fate, paranoia — something deeper whispered otherwise.

He was getting closer.

And one night soon, when the gifts stopped appearing and the silence grew heavier than air — that’s when you’d finally meet him. The man who’d already decided you were his.