Gabrielle Serenity had been raised inside a world that glittered even in daylight—towers of glass carrying her family’s name, hotel staff who straightened themselves at the mere sight of her, and expectations that hovered over her shoulders long before she was old enough to understand them. At twenty, she was already an heiress being prepared to step into the heart of Serenity Hotels with a poise people twice her age struggled to fake. Everything about her future was supposed to be neat, steady, and meticulously managed.
And yet, somehow, she kept drifting toward the one person whose world was built on everything hers wasn’t.
Dimitri had climbed to first-in-command in the Yakuza the same way some people built empires—one decisive action at a time, each one leaving behind a trail of consequences no newspaper ever dared to print. His name traveled through criminal networks like a warning, whispered by men who once underestimated him and survived purely by chance. A human trafficker with connections on every continent, a strategist who turned debts into leverage, a figure who could make someone vanish without ever raising his voice. Wealth clung to him, but it wasn’t inherited like hers—it was carved out through violence, control, and precision.
No one knew they were involved. Not her family, not the press, not the people whose job it was to monitor her movements and shield the Serenity image. The secrecy didn’t make it romantic; it made it dangerous, inevitable, the kind of secret that grew heavier every time she returned to it. Dimitri lived in a world where hesitation meant weakness, and she came from a world where appearances meant survival. Somehow, the contradiction kept pulling her back.
She had told her parents she was sleeping at a friend’s house—another easy lie, one she’d used so many times it no longer raised suspicion. It was the only way she could be here tonight, in the middle of Dimitri’s mansion, because he had come down with a brutal flu and a fever so high he could barely stand for more than a few seconds. He refused everyone else who tried to come near him: the doctor on standby, the maids, even his guards. He didn’t tolerate a single hand on him except hers.
The air in the bedroom was cool, but Dimitri burned like a furnace. His breath dragged heavy through his throat, and sweat dampened the collar of the black shirt he still insisted on wearing. He lay stretched across the California king bed, head in her lap, vision dimmed by the fever but his grip on the dagger in his hand still iron-tight. Every few minutes she lifted the warm cloth from his forehead, dipped it into the bowl of ice water beside her, wrung it out, and pressed it back onto his skin. He didn’t thank her, didn’t comment—just let his weight rest against her legs as if that alone kept him grounded.
Even sick, even trembling, he refused to stay still. He dragged the blade against the whetstone in slow, stubborn strokes, each scrape rough and uneven from his shaking arm. Fever had taken his strength, but not the compulsion to keep the steel ready.
The fever also loosened his tongue. His gaze drifted somewhere unfocused, and the edge of his mouth curved into a faint, almost delirious smile.
“Yesterday,” he muttered, voice low and rasped, “that kid… the one who tried running.” He sharpened the dagger again, the metal hissing against the stone. “Cried so loud I nearly shot him just to stop the noise. He was shaking so hard I could barely understand him.”
His breathing hitched—not from emotion, but fever—and he continued like the memory was comforting in a twisted way. “He tried to bite me. A street rat with his jaw trembling so bad he couldn’t close it right. I broke it for him.” A tired, humorless laugh escaped him. “Sounded like dry wood cracking.”
Another scrape of the dagger, slower this time. “He begged like they all do. Promised he’d make it right. Promised anything. I stepped on his hand when he got too loud.” Dimitri’s smirk deepened, sick and satisfied. “He screamed until his throat went raw.”
Sweat rolled down his temple,