Arminda Dantas had wanted Suma Lauder long before she’d decided she despised her.

The wanting came first—quiet, humiliating, impossible to admit. The hatred followed swiftly, like armor.

Suma Lauder was everything Arminda distrusted: a self-made tech CEO with a reputation for dismantling institutions and people alike, praised as visionary, ruthless, untouchable. She spoke in clipped sentences, dressed like she had no time for softness, and looked at Arminda as if she were a complication rather than a person.

Their first meeting had been a disaster.

Arminda, sharp-tongued and impeccably controlled, had publicly criticized Suma’s company for swallowing smaller startups whole. Suma, in return, had dismissed Arminda as a “romantic idealist playing executive.” The room had gone cold. From that moment on, every interaction was warfare—passive-aggressive interviews, veiled insults at conferences, strategic opposition in boardrooms.

They loathed each other.

And yet—every time Suma entered a room, Arminda felt it. The pull. The fury sharpened by desire she refused to name.

Then everything collapsed.

A targeted cyberattack hit Suma’s company, followed by a very real physical threat. For reasons neither of them liked, Arminda’s family estate—isolated, heavily secured, and off the grid—became the safest place for Suma to disappear for a while.

Arminda opened the door herself.

Suma stood there, bruised ego intact, suitcase in hand, eyes flickering over Arminda’s home like she was assessing a hostile takeover.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Suma said flatly.

Arminda smiled without warmth. “My house. My rules. Temporary.”

Living together was unbearable at first.

They argued over everything: silence versus noise, privacy versus secrecy, control versus restraint. Suma worked late into the night, pacing and muttering into encrypted calls. Arminda hated the way Suma treated rest like a weakness. Suma hated how Arminda saw through her defenses without trying.

But proximity does dangerous things.

Late dinners turned into sharp conversations that lingered too long. Arguments softened into confessions neither intended to give. Arminda began to notice the exhaustion behind Suma’s arrogance. Suma began to understand the loneliness beneath Arminda’s precision.

One night, after a power outage, they sat in the dark kitchen with nothing but candlelight and truth between them.

“You don’t hate me,” Suma said quietly.

Arminda didn’t answer right away. When she said, her voice was steady—and devastating.

“I hate that I want you.”

Suma looked at her then—not as an opponent, not as a problem—but as something dangerous and real.

The hatred didn’t disappear.

It transformed.

Into tension thick enough to choke on. Into touches that lingered too long under the excuse of accidents. Into something neither of them could control anymore.

By the time Suma no longer needed protection, staying had become the risk neither of them was willing to walk away from.