Casanova's Love Affair

There was no storm that night. No raging winds, no warning signs.

Just silence. Then headlights.

Cayleigh Sasa Montemayor had always imagined her wedding day to be something out of a fairy tale. Growing up in the pristine halls of the Montemayor estate, surrounded by crystal chandeliers, soft classical music, and the scent of lavender that always lingered on her mother’s dresses, Cayleigh was a woman who believed in control. In destiny. In perfection.

And marrying Knile Monte Forteros was the final thread to her ideal tapestry. Their union wasn't just about love—though there was a tenderness in Knile she thought no one else could see. It was about legacy. About two powerful families weaving their fortunes and visions together, sealing their dominance over media and hospitality in a single, golden vow.

But fate—cruel, poetic, ironic fate—had other plans.

That evening, Cayleigh had just left her bridal fitting. The gown—designed by an up-and-coming genius named Akira Rodrigo Salamanca—hugged her body with elegance, and she had marveled at how it shimmered with every move she made. She was radiant. Untouchable.

Until she wasn’t.

The car came out of nowhere. Screeching tires, a thunderclap of steel against steel, and then... silence. Again.

Cayleigh never remembered the sound of her own scream. Just the smell of burnt leather. The pain came later—slow, creeping, before it swallowed her whole.

Knile stood outside the operating room, his palms stained with her blood, his mind racing with calculations he couldn't fix. He had made billions managing crises in print, weaving narratives to his liking. But now, the only story he wanted to rewrite was one reality refused to yield.

The doctors told him the truth like they were delivering the morning paper—cold, clinical, irreversible.

“She survived. But both legs were crushed beyond repair. Amputation was the only option.”

Knile didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Not for minutes. Maybe hours.

The news spread through the hospital like a virus, but outside its walls, the media remained quiet. He saw to that. One phone call to the editor-in-chief. Another to the station manager. And then, nothing. No headlines. No whispers. Just silence.

Because Knile Monte Forteros didn’t mourn publicly.

Instead, he hunted.

The man responsible for Cayleigh’s destruction was a name that had once graced his magazine’s cover. Akira Rodrigo Salamanca. Prodigy. Creator. Darling of the elite. Knile had even shaken his hand once, not knowing that those same hands would soon cause the woman he loved to be broken.

The police had barely begun the investigation when Knile stepped in. Lawyers. Bribes. Influence. It was almost too easy. Aki disappeared from the public’s eye, detained somewhere no one could find him. The world moved on, unaware of the tragedy that had just rewritten three lives.

But inside that hidden cell, Aki refused to beg for mercy.

“I’ll pay,” he said, his voice cracked, face bruised from the arrest. “Not with prison. With my life.”

Knile laughed. A cold, bitter thing. “You think serving Cayleigh will fix what you’ve done?”

“I don’t know,” Aki admitted. “But I have nothing left to lose.”

And so, the arrangement was made—not from compassion, but convenience. Cayleigh would need full-time care. Someone who understood her, someone who could offer more than pity. And Knile? He wanted Aki to suffer. To see, every day, what he had destroyed.

Cayleigh awoke to a world that no longer fit her.

At first, she refused to look. Refused to speak. Her parents hired therapists, priests, even old mystics who whispered blessings over her bed. But nothing reached her—not until she heard his voice.

“Miss Montemayor,” Aki said gently, on the first day of his servitude. “I’m here to help you, for as long as you’ll have me.”

She opened her eyes. Not to forgiveness. But curiosity.

“You,” she said. “You did this to me.”

“I know,” he replied, not defending himself. “I’m sorry.”

A pause. Then she nodded once, curt and cold. “Then you’ll be my legs.”

From that moment forward, Aki became her shadow. Her limbs. Her hands when hers trembled. Her eyes when her vision blurred with tears she refused to let fall. He carried her in and out of her private therapy sessions, cooked her bland hospital meals, read to her when silence became too loud.

He never asked for her grace. And she never gave it.

But time is a strange sculptor. And what begins as stone eventually softens.

Knile visited less and less.

He told himself it was work. That the company needed him, that the media silence needed constant maintenance. But the truth was uglier—he couldn’t bear to see Cayleigh like that. Couldn’t face the helplessness in her eyes, the way her voice trembled when she spoke to him, or worse—when it didn’t tremble at all.

And she had Aki now. The man who broke her. The man who now healed her, little by little.

Knile watched from afar, behind security footage and silent bodyguards. He saw the way Cayleigh’s fingers gripped Aki’s sleeve when she struggled to move. The way she laughed—just once—when he made a poor attempt at cooking soup. The way their silences grew less bitter, more... familiar.

He told himself it was pity. Gratitude. Nothing more.

But Knile had built his empire on understanding human nature—and even he couldn’t deny what he saw blooming in their stolen moments.

And that terrified him more than the accident ever had.

"What have I done?" with his sorrowful voice.

Aki hadn’t meant to fall in love. He told himself that every day.

But love didn’t ask for permission.

He saw the way Cayleigh stared out the window in the early mornings, her eyes tracing the path she could no longer walk. He noticed the way she kept every magazine clipping of her and Knile, even as her smile faded from them. He admired her strength, her rage, her vulnerability—things no camera had ever captured.

And one day, when he helped her into her wheelchair and their hands lingered just a moment too long, he felt it. That unbearable, traitorous flutter.

“I hate you,” she whispered once, her head against his chest. “But you’re the only one who stays.”

And he stayed.

Not because he had to. But because he wanted to.

What is love, if born from guilt? If nurtured in silence?

Is it real?

Or is it a betrayal—of pain, of memory, of the woman she once was, and the man who was supposed to be hers?

These are questions no one dares ask out loud. Not Knile. Not Cayleigh. Not even Aki.

But soon, answers will demand to be found.

Because in the world of the wealthy, the powerful, and the broken, even love must pay its debt.