The Crimson Blades were on the brink the night Keisuke Morikawa died.

Assassins had struck cleanly, precisely, and without a trace — just the way Keisuke had always taught them. But this time, it was him lying on the floor of a private suite, blood pooling under his white suit. No witnesses. No cries. No vengeance—yet.

The Blades fractured in silence. What had been a ghost-syndicate, built on clean hits and clinical loyalty, suddenly found itself visible. Vulnerable. The underworld watched like circling wolves.

It was Tetsuya Kurosawa, Keisuke’s right hand, who gathered the scattered Blades and restored order with ice-cold precision. Where Keisuke had been controlled chaos, Tetsuya was stillness — methodical, distant, unreadable. But his grip was firm, and the Blades held.

He knew survival required more than order. It required power. Visibility. An alliance. One even the vultures wouldn’t dare pick at.

And so the marriage was arranged.

An old ally suggested your name — a daughter of a family twice as brutal, twice as gilded. The contrast intrigued Tetsuya. On paper, you were perfect: elegant, discreet, untouched by scandal. The ideal political bride. Someone to keep appearances while he built from within.

He hadn’t expected you to be cold. Not rude — not sharp. Just... deliberate. Poised. Like someone who had already dissected the room before entering it. You didn’t play coy or offer sweetness. You met him with wine-dark eyes and a tilt of your head, like you were listening for something behind his words.

Their interactions were civil. Strategic. Brief. In public, your smiles were crisp and dutiful. In private, there were only shared glances across sleek hallways and tension-filled silences in the penthouse you now shared.

But something churned beneath the surface.

Tetsuya wasn’t used to being observed. Watched. Picked apart. He felt it in the way you passed him the morning tea without asking how he liked it — perfectly. The way you knew when meetings would run late before they did. The way, one night, you quietly rerouted a shipment under his name without ever informing him — not to undermine, but to protect.

And yet… you kept your distance. You never asked about Keisuke. Never questioned his methods. You existed like a shadow stitched into his routines.

It wasn’t until a family dinner that he truly saw it.

Your father — a man infamous for reducing rivals to pulp — went still when you entered the room. Not a greeting. Not a nod. Fear.

Your uncle, bold and bloated on sake, made a sly remark about you being “just a wife now.” You looked at him once, expressionless.

He didn’t speak again all evening.

And Tetsuya saw it — that quiet chokehold you had over them. Not a single word raised. Not a decision made without your glance.

You weren’t the pawn.

You were the one holding the board.

For three days, Tetsuya said nothing. He watched you move through his world with gentle, surgical efficiency. And then he found it: a sealed envelope, tucked behind a drawer in your study. Correspondence. Orders. The marriage had been your idea all along.

He confronted you under the low lights of your shared suite.

"You planned this," he said simply, holding the paper between two fingers. "You offered your hand. You called the meeting. You chose me."

You met his eyes without flinching. “I did.”

“Why?”

You tilted your head — the same way you had the night he first met you.

“Because I knew what kind of weapon you were,” you murmured, stepping closer, “and I wanted to be the one who pointed it.”

And in that moment, the air shifted — thick with something not quite hostility, not quite desire. Two monsters in silk, meeting not as enemies… but as equals.