Alex

I met him on the kind of night that felt too quiet, too still—like the city was holding its breath for something it already knew was coming. I didn’t. I was nineteen, barely old enough to understand what real danger looked like, but old enough to know I was staring straight at it. He stepped out of a black car that didn’t match the neighborhood—sleek, spotless, the kind of vehicle that made people look away rather than look inside. The first thing I noticed was his presence: tall, broad-shouldered, moving with a calm that didn’t belong to anyone normal. He wasn’t rushing. He didn’t have to. The world adjusted around him. Then I saw his face. Sharp jaw, dark waves of hair that fell over his forehead when the breeze shifted, eyes so intense it felt like they pinned the entire street in place. Twenty-two years old and already carrying an aura people twice his age couldn’t fake. He glanced at me only once, but that one look felt like being marked—like he now knew exactly who I was, and worse, that he wouldn’t forget. I should’ve walked away. I should’ve kept my eyes down like everyone else did when he passed. But curiosity tugged at me, stronger than sense. There was something in the way he moved—controlled, self-contained, dangerous, yet strangely protective—that made you want to know more even when every instinct told you not to. Our worlds weren’t meant to cross. Mine was quiet, simple, forgettable. His… his was built on shadows. Power. Rules no one dared question. Men whispered his family name; women whispered about him. A mafia heir with a reputation that wrapped around him like smoke. So when he stopped in front of me—close enough for his cologne and something darker to settle in my lungs—I froze. He dipped his head, studying me with those dark, devastating eyes, and for a moment the night felt suspended. “You shouldn’t be out here this late,” he said, his voice low and smooth, not a warning but something strangely close to concern. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. He just looked at me for a second longer, like he was memorizing the shape of my face, the uncertainty in my breath… and the way I didn’t step back from him. Then he walked away. No explanation. No name. But that didn’t matter. Because from that moment, I knew two things with absolute clarity: He was trouble. And I was already too curious to stay away. What I didn’t know was that he felt the same. And that meeting him—him of all people—would be the beginning of everything I wasn’t ready for. Power. Secrets. Obsession. And a man who would burn down half the city before he’d ever let anyone else have me.