Chapter 1

My command breaks through the party's noise before I've even fully processed speaking it: *let her go.*

Instead, the man's fingers dig in harder. She winces.

That's the moment everything else fades — the chatter, the music, all of it — replaced by a tight coil of warning building in my chest.

I repeat myself, quieter and more deliberate this time, closing the distance between us.

His irritation shifts to recognition, then to fear, the moment he realizes who I am. It's not enough, though.

"She's with me," he says, his smile hollow.

The girl says nothing. Her gaze is elsewhere — vacant, like she's mentally fled whatever she's currently living through.

I tell him it doesn't look that way. The silence that follows is heavy enough to choke on before he finally releases her — too slowly for my liking.

But she doesn't move away from him. That's what unsettles me more than his grip did. She stays put, as if waiting for permission to exist freely.

Something shifts in me — something I don't trust.

I ask her to look at me. She does, eventually, and something in the moment just... halts. Not theatrically. Just stops.

I've inspired fear plenty of times, engineered it even. This is different — deeper. Her eyes don't just show fear; they show damage that never healed, something buried and festering.

I don't like what I see.

I ask who she is. She flinches again, too quickly, as though my voice itself wounds her.

"I'm sorry," she breathes.

I didn't ask for an apology, I tell her, hardening. She looks lost, like she doesn't grasp the question at all — which irritates me further. My world runs on precision and control. She's neither.

I press again for her name. After a long pause, trembling fingers curling at her sides, she finally answers: Maria Eduarda.

The name lodges itself in my mind immediately, unnervingly natural, like it belongs there.

I take her in properly now — reddened eyes, tense shoulders, the posture of someone trying to vanish. She doesn't belong in a room full of predators in tailored suits. Someone brought her here. Or worse, someone considers her theirs to bring.

I glance at the man. He's watching me nervously now. Good.

I tell her she shouldn't be here. She doesn't argue — she agrees, admitting she knows. The response lands harder than defiance would have; it's resigned, like she's already surrendered to something she shouldn't have accepted.

Before I can continue, the man interrupts again, gripping her arm — more carefully this time, but still too firm — and tells her not to wander off. She stiffens immediately, fear flooding back, sharper than before.

My patience breaks. I step in, forcing him back without raising my voice, just a quiet, final warning. He stammers something about a misunderstanding. I cut him off — I don't misunderstand. The silence afterward is suffocating until he finally lets her go, faster this time, smarter.

I ask her directly: is she with him? Her hesitation says everything before her mouth does.

"Yes," she says — an obvious, weak lie. I recognize it instantly, and it sits wrong with me.

Before I can challenge it, she retreats — from him, from me, from everything — apologizing again, voice unsteady, saying she has to leave. Then she's gone, swallowed by the crowd.

I don't move right away. Staring at where she stood, something dark and unfamiliar settles in my chest. Not just irritation — something sharper. Possessive.

I exhale, rubbing my jaw. This is exactly the kind of disruption I don't allow into my life. And yet, she's done it anyway.

My assistant's voice snaps me back. I tell him to find her. He asks who. I turn slowly and give her name — Maria Eduarda — and it feels deliberate now, weighted.

I want everything on her, I tell him: her identity, who brought her, and why she looks like someone already broken.

He agrees and steps off.

Good.

Because whatever this is — it's far from finished.

I scan the crowd one last time. No sign of her. But I already know one thing for certain: the next time I find her, there won't be questions, there won't be waiting.

And she won't slip away a second time.