CHAPTER 1

BRANDON POV

  DREAM

  “You took advantage of me.”

  Killian stands in the middle of my old bedroom, shirt half-buttoned, hair a mess from sleep, eyes burning with something that looks a lot like betrayal. Morning light spills through the tall windows of the mansion, cold and unforgiving. He looks wrecked. Beautiful. Ruined.

  “You fucking touched me while I was drunk,” he spits, voice shaking. “You kissed me. You put your hand on me and kept going even when you should have stopped—” He cuts himself off, face twisting like the memory alone is enough to make him sick. “I was wasted, Brandon. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And you still… you still made me—”

  I try to speak, but my throat locks. I am eighteen again—raw, stupid, desperate. I take a step toward him and he recoils like I am the last person he wants near him.

  “Stay the fuck away from me,” he snarls. “Don’t call. Don’t text. Don’t come near me at school. Don’t even look at me. You took advantage of me when I couldn’t think straight. You were supposed to be my best friend.”

  He keeps going. Every word is a blade. He says I should have stopped the second I realized how gone he was. He says he remembers pieces his own hands on me, his voice calling my name, the way he had leaned into it but that doesn’t make it okay. He says I still crossed the line. He says he regrets the night ever happened. He says the thought of what we did makes him feel sick with himself and with me. His voice rises until it cracks, and then he is shoving past me, shoulder slamming into mine hard enough to bruise. The door to my bedroom flies open. His footsteps thunder down the long hallway. The front door of the mansion slams so hard the crystal chandelier in the foyer trembles.

  Silence follows.

  I am left standing there, chest heaving, the ghost of his body still warm against my palm from the night before. The way he had kissed me back. The way his hands had pulled me closer even while his words slurred. The way he had come apart under my hand, gasping my name like it was the only word he knew. And then morning. And then this.

  I wake with a violent jolt, heart slamming against my ribs like it is trying to escape. Sweat soaks the sheets. My breath comes in ragged pulls. For a disorienting second I do not know where I am. The ceiling above me is high and modern, all clean lines and recessed lighting. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretch along one entire wall, revealing the glittering sprawl of Seoul at night. My penthouse. The one I bought years ago when I decided I couldn’t stay in New York any longer.

  south Korea 

  Ten years later.

  I sit up slowly, the silk sheets sliding down my bare chest. My skin feels too tight. The dream clings to me like smoke. I can still hear Killian’s voice—raw, broken, final. You took advantage of me. The words have lived in my head for a decade. They have followed me into boardrooms and private jets and empty beds. They have poisoned every victory.

  I swing my legs over the side of the massive bed and rest my elbows on my knees, head hanging. My hands are trembling. I curl them into fists until the shaking stops. Outside, the city pulses with light. Somewhere far below, people are living ordinary lives. Falling in love. Raising children. Forgetting.

  I have never forgotten.

  After that morning, I still went to school. I tried. God, I tried. Every time I saw him in the hallway I stepped closer, voice low, careful, almost pleading. He never let me finish a sentence. He would turn on his heel and walk away like I was invisible. In class he sat as far from me as possible. At lunch he disappeared. The few times our eyes met, his were pure ice. Watching him hate me every single day was slowly destroying me. So I did the only thing I could think of. I told my parents I needed to leave New York. I used the company’s growing interests in Asia as the perfect excuse. They agreed. Within weeks I was gone—on a plane to South Korea, putting an ocean between me and the boy who could barely stand to look at me.

  But distance never stopped the obsession.

  Even from Seoul I kept watching. Private investigators. Encrypted reports. Quiet payments to people who could get me what I needed. I tracked every move Killian made back in New York. Every address change. Every exhibition where his paintings appeared. I know the exact date he met the woman who is now his wife. I know the hospital where his daughter was born six years ago. I have seen pictures—carefully, obsessively collected. Killian holding a tiny girl with his eyes and someone else’s smile. Killian standing in a small studio, paint on his hands, looking tired and content in a way he never looked with me. Killian kissing his wife on a quiet New York street like he had never once come undone under another man’s hand.

  I know all of it.

  And still, the obsession has never loosened its grip. If anything, it has tightened. Every year that passed without him only fed it. Every success I stacked on top of the last every company absorbed, every rival crushed, every zero added to the family fortune felt hollow because he was not there to see it. I built an empire with one hand and stalked the life of a struggling painter with the other. I told myself it was enough to watch from a distance. That I could live with the knowledge of him existing somewhere, even if it was without me.

  I was lying to myself again.

  I stand and walk naked to the window, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. The reflection that stares back at me is not the eighteen-year-old boy who once stood frozen while the only person he had ever loved tore him apart with words. This version of me is harder. Broader through the shoulders. Sharper around the eyes. Money and power and obsession have carved me into something colder.

  Tomorrow I fly back to New York. The final documents are already signed. My father is stepping down. The entire weight of the family empire—shipping, real estate, tech, the old-money foundations that have kept our name whispered in the right rooms for generations—transfers to me the moment I land. I have spent years here in Seoul building the Asian side of the business, using work as the perfect excuse to stay away. That chapter is over. Now the only place I need to be is home.

  I should feel triumph. Pride. The cold satisfaction of absolute power.

  All I feel is the echo of a voice saying I took advantage of him, and the bone-deep certainty that I am done waiting.

  I turn away from the window and cross the penthouse, the heated floors warm under my feet. The place is immaculate, all dark marble and clean lines and art that costs more than most people will earn in a lifetime. None of it feels like mine. It feels like a waiting room. Everything in my life has felt like a waiting room since the morning Killian walked out of it.

  In the kitchen I pour a glass of water I do not drink. My phone sits on the counter. I unlock it and open the encrypted folder I have kept for years. Photos. Articles. Screenshots of gallery openings. A blurry shot of Killian walking through a New York park with a little girl on his shoulders, her hands tangled in his hair. Another of him standing in front of one of his own paintings, head tilted, studying the canvas like it holds answers. He looks older. Still lean. Still stubborn around the mouth. Still the most beautiful thing I have ever wanted.

  I close the folder before the ache in my chest can turn into something I cannot control.

  Ten years.

  Ten years of silence. Ten years of watching him build a life that did not include me. Ten years of telling myself that if I just stayed away, the hunger would eventually starve itself out.

  It never did.

  I set the phone down and brace both hands on the edge of the counter, head bowed. Tomorrow I leave Seoul. Tomorrow I return to the city where everything began—and where everything ended. Killian is still there. Married. A father. Painting his quiet little life. But none of that changes what is coming.

  I will find him.

  I always do.

  The dream rises again behind my eyes—Killian’s face twisted with hurt and anger, his voice shaking with the force of every accusation. You took advantage of me. You should have stopped. I let the memory burn through me until it hardens into something sharper. Something useful.

  He can blame me. He can hate what happened. He can be married. He can have a daughter. He can paint pretty pictures and pretend the night we shared never meant anything.

  None of it changes the truth that has lived in my blood since we were eighteen.

  He is mine.

  And this time, I am not letting him run.