Chapter 2

Knile Monte Forteros had always believed that control was everything.

He controlled markets with headlines, steered public opinion like a tide, and built empires with a single signature. He didn’t need to shout to be heard. His silence spoke louder than any press release. His presence commanded boardrooms, and his name opened doors others didn’t even know existed.

But now, as he stood in the hallway outside Cayleigh’s room—unable to take one more step inward—he realized there was one thing even he couldn’t control:

Time.

Or more specifically, how it could strip away everything in seconds.

She had been so beautiful that day. He remembered the way her veil had shimmered under the studio lights, the way her laughter echoed in the hallway of the boutique when she teased him for being too stiff about floral arrangements. She had always been softness with a spine, poised but mischievous. She made power look graceful.

Now, she wouldn’t even look him in the eye.

And that... that killed him more than the accident itself.

Knile didn’t cry when the doctors gave him the news. He didn’t scream or rage. He simply nodded and made the necessary calls. One to the head of PR. Another to the legal department. And finally, one to an offshore contact who could erase every trace of the Salamanca boy’s presence from the media entirely.

He did what he always did—solve, suppress, sanitize.

But what he couldn’t fix was Cayleigh’s silence.

He visited every day at first. Sat beside her. Brought the luxury things she used to like—Belgian chocolates, imported cashmere throws, her favorite dried peonies from Florence.

But she didn’t smile. Not even once.

At first, he told himself it was the trauma. She just needed time. But days stretched into weeks, and with every visit, he felt more like a stranger, intruding on a life that was no longer his to share.

And then came him.

Akira Rodrigo Salamanca.

Knile couldn’t decide what he hated more: the fact that the man still breathed, or the fact that Cayleigh seemed to tolerate him.

Maybe even... prefer him.

He watched them from his office screen one night, the security footage looping quietly. Aki helping Cayleigh with her tea. The gentle way he steadied her when she leaned forward. Her body relaxed around him—not like with Knile, where her shoulders were always taut, her words clipped, her eyes cold.

Knile told himself it was temporary. That she would come back to him once the healing began. But healing required presence. And Knile hadn’t been present in weeks.

He had an empire to run.

Didn’t he?

Still, something gnawed at his gut every time he thought of that man sitting beside her in the garden. The way her laughter—the one he hadn’t heard in months—had risen like music he wasn’t allowed to listen to anymore.

It was irrational. Childish, even.

But Knile had never been the type to feel jealousy.

Not until now.

That evening, as the sun bled across the glass walls of his penthouse, Knile stood by the window with a glass of whiskey in hand. The city buzzed below—cars, lives, voices. All so small from up here. All so distant.

He didn’t hear Sabrina, his assistant, enter until she cleared her throat.

“Sir, the investors from Singapore are ready for the call.”

He nodded but didn’t turn. “Give me ten minutes.”

She hesitated. “Is... everything all right, sir?”

Knile stared out at the skyline, his reflection half-visible in the glass—sharp suit, sharp jaw, empty eyes.

“No,” he said quietly. “Everything’s exactly as it should be.”

But it wasn’t.

Because Knile Monte Forteros had always gotten what he wanted. Until now.

Until the one thing he wanted most—the woman he once saw as his equal, his bride, his future—started slipping through his fingers.

And into someone else’s hands.

Knile stared into the amber swirl of his whiskey, watching the way the light caught the edges of the glass like it was mocking him. Everything in his life was meant to be clear—planned, clean, logical. But now, even the silence felt corrupted.

The apartment was too quiet. Too sterile. Cayleigh had decorated part of it once, choosing soft hues to balance his minimalism. She had laughed when she replaced his sleek, cold coffee table with one made of reclaimed wood and brass corners. “Let’s make this place feel lived in,” she had said.

Now it just felt empty. Like everything else.

He walked toward the wide floor-to-ceiling window again, his reflection following him in the glass. Knile Monte Forteros: CEO, media king, heir to a lineage of untouchable power—and now, a man watching his fiancée slip further into the arms of the one who shattered her.

His hand tightened around the glass.

He hated how Cayleigh looked at Aki. Not with warmth, not quite yet. But with attention. With the kind of raw, stripped-down emotion she no longer offered him. He had seen it. Felt it. The subtle shift in her posture when Aki entered the room. The way her voice softened—not out of affection, but familiarity.

Knile couldn’t decide what disgusted him more: the man who had broken her body...

…or himself, for letting that same man stay.

He had the power to end this. One word and Aki would disappear into obscurity, no trial, no chance. His wealth could bury any truth six feet under. It wouldn’t be hard.

But he hadn’t done it.

Because as much as he wanted revenge… Cayleigh had asked him not to. Not in words, but in looks. In that sharp, unspoken warning in her eyes the moment he suggested sending Aki away. “I decide who stays.”

And he obeyed. Like a man dethroned.

What am I becoming?

The whiskey slipped from his grip.

The sound of the glass shattering against the marble floor startled him more than it should have. Shards scattered, amber liquid bleeding like regret across cold stone.

Sabrina came rushing in.

“Sir—!”

“Leave it,” he said sharply.

She hesitated, then nodded and backed away.

Knile stared at the mess, unmoving.

Somewhere deep inside him, something began to shift.

He wasn’t just losing Cayleigh. He was losing himself.

And Knile Monte Forteros had never been good at losing.