2. Unsettling Obsession

A heavy silence blanketed the dimly lit office. The air smelled of expensive cigars and leather, thick with tension.

Pedro Montonio leaned back in his chair, his sharp blue eyes locked onto the man standing before him. Across the polished oak desk, Derrick, his most trusted right-hand, stood rigid, hands clasped behind his back.

“You have one minute,” Pedro said, voice smooth but laced with ice. “Tell me why the shipment never reached the port.”

Derrick swallowed but didn’t flinch. He had been with Pedro long enough to know fear was useless. “There was a breach,” he said steadily. “Our men were already stationed, but someone leaked the coordinates.”

Pedro’s fingers tapped against the desk. Once. Twice. A slow, deliberate rhythm.

“And?”

Derrick exhaled sharply. “Before we arrived, the authorities were already conducting a sweep. The shipment never made it. We lost everything.”

The tapping stopped.

The air grew heavier.

Pedro said nothing, but the silence alone made the temperature in the room drop. His men feared his words, but they feared his silence even more.

Derrick continued, voice tense. “This was an inside job, Boss. Someone betrayed us.”

A muscle in Pedro’s jaw twitched. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk, his presence suffocating. “Who?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Pedro inhaled slowly. Then, in a movement almost too fast to track, he grabbed the glass of whiskey beside him and hurled it across the room. The crystal shattered against the far wall, amber liquid staining the carpet.

Derrick remained still, but the two guards stationed near the door stiffened.

Pedro’s gaze darkened. “Find out,” he said coldly. “And when you do, bring him to me. Alive.”

A beat passed before Derrick nodded. “Yes, Boss.”

Pedro dismissed him with a flick of his fingers, and Derrick turned on his heel, exiting without another word.

Pedro exhaled through his nose, his mind already calculating the damage. A lost shipment was one thing. A traitor was another.

His fingers reached for his phone. One call. One order. That was all it took to make a man disappear.

But before he could dial, something on his laptop screen caught his eye.

A live feed.

His mood shifted instantly. The fury lingering in his veins drained away, replaced by something darker. Something more dangerous.

He leaned back, clicking the feed to enlarge the view.

There she was.

Aelia.

Unaware. Innocent. Sitting at her desk, glasses perched on her nose, lost in whatever mundane task occupied her.

Pedro’s lips curled into a slow smirk.

Earlier that morning, he had given an order:

“In the next hour, I want full access to every security feed in that office.”

And now, he watched her. Unfiltered, uninterrupted. His own private show!

His fingers drummed lightly against the desk as he observed her movements. She kept pushing her hair behind her ear, only for it to fall back again. It frustrated her. He could tell by the little frown creasing her forehead.

Pedro’s smirk deepened.

He had been right about her.

She was fascinating. Earlier when he spotted her in the courthouse, he almost didn’t believe it. She was too good to be true. The resemblance. Everything!

The addiction was growing, rapidly consuming him, and he didn’t intend to fight it.

But then, something blocked his view.

A man.

Pedro’s tapping ceased.

The fool had stepped into the frame, standing too close to Aelia. Too comfortable.

Pedro’s eyes narrowed.

His grip tightened around his phone, ready to make a call that would ensure such an image never repeated itself.

But then—

Aelia smiled.

Not just a polite curve of her lips. A real smile.

Bright. Blinding. Carefree.

It struck him like a bullet.

She laughed, her cheeks wrinkling, eyes turning into soft crescents. Even her brows arched, the same shade as her auburn hair, giving her expression an innocent warmth.

Pedro’s blood ran hot.

He lowered the phone, pulse pounding in his ears.

“Hello, Boss—”

He ended the call before the voice on the other end could finish.

This wasn’t a job for his men. This was personal.

“She smiled so brightly…”

“But that smile didn’t belong to me.”

His teeth clenched.

“She gave her smile to him.”

The words came out almost paranoid, his mind spiraling into a dangerous abyss.

“That bastard had no right to it.”

His knuckles whitened as his grip on the desk tightened.

“No fucking right to something that should have been mine.”

The need to correct this burned through him. Aelia was his. She just didn’t know it yet.

But soon, she would.