Chapter 1

You're nervous," King said, his deep voice carrying that husky sound that always made something low in her belly tighten. He reached across the table, his large hand engulfing her smaller one, his thumb stroking across her knuckles with deliberate slowness. "You know I'd never let anything hurt you in here. Or anywhere else."

"I'm not nervous," Victoria lied, offering him the smile that had gotten her through countless political dinners at her father's side. Warm and perfect. "I'm just wondering why you brought me to the most expensive restaurant in Lagos on a random Tuesday in December."

The restaurant was a symphony of understated elegance,crystal chandeliers casting warm amber light across tables draped in cream linen, soft jazz filtering through speakers hidden somewhere in the vaulted ceiling, and the gentle clink of expensive cutleries against fine plates that screamed old money.

Victoria Nanya Okereke smoothed her hands over the emerald silk of her dress, a nervous gesture she quite managed to suppress .Across the table, Kingston Adeyemi watched her with those dark, intense eyes that had been studying her like she was a puzzle he was determined to solve for three years now.

"Random?" King's lips curved with his killer smile. At thirty-two, he'd built a tech empire from nothing, fought his way up from streets that tried to swallow an orphaned fifteen-year-old boy,and turned himself into a force of nature worth half a billion dollars.

He looked the part tonight in a charcoal suit tailored so precisely it might as well have been painted on his six-foot-three frame. "Baby, nothing I do with you is random. You should know that by now."

Victoria's heart kicked against her ribs. She did know. King planned everything with the same strategic brilliance that had made Adeyemi Enterprises one of the most powerful tech companies in Lagos. Including whatever was about to happen tonight.

The waiter arrived with champagne, Dom Pérignon, which King must have ordered before she arrived. Of course he had. The man controlled every variable he could, and the ones he couldn't control, he eliminated.

"To us," King said, lifting his glass, his gaze never leaving hers. "To three years of the most beautiful torture I've ever experienced."

Victoria laughed despite her nerves, touching her glass to his. "I'm torture now?"

"The best kind." King drank, then set down his glass with careful precision. "The kind that makes every other experience in life feel pale and meaningless by comparison. The kind that keeps me awake at night, that drives me to build empires just to be worthy of one smile.

The kind that's made me propose twice and get rejected twice, and still come back for more. "Oh God. Here it was.

Victoria's fingers tightened around the stem of her champagne flute. Around them, other diners laughed and talked, oblivious to the fact that her entire world was about to tilt on its axis. Again.

The first proposal had been six months into their relationship, wildly premature and passionate and so very King. “I know what I want, and I want you, forever and now. She'd laughed it off as romantic impulse, though her heart had ached at having to refuse.”

The second had been on their two-year anniversary, more planned, more serious. A weekend getaway, a sunset, a ring that probably cost more than most people's houses. And she'd said no again, because how could she say yes when she wasn't sure of herself. When he'd never spent a full night with her, 

"King…" she started, but he was already moving.

He stood with the fluid grace of a man completely comfortable in his own power, and then he was rounding the table, and oh God, he was dropping to one knee right there in the middle of the restaurant, and conversations around them were dying out as people turned to stare.

"Victoria Nanya Okereke," King said, pulling a small velvet box from his pocket. The same box. The same ring. He'd kept it, carried it and waited. "I've proposed twice. You've said no twice. I'm asking a third time, and baby, I need you to understand something."

He opened the box. The diamond caught the light, throwing rainbows across the cream tablecloth. Two carats, emerald cut, set in platinum with smaller diamonds cascading down the band,just like her taste, because of course King knew exactly what she'd want.

"I'm not asking because I need you to complete me," King continued, his voice dropping lower, more intimate, as if they were alone instead of surrounded by dozens of witnesses. "I'm asking because I'm complete with you, and empty without you.

I'm asking because three years of having you close but not completely mine is slowly killing me. I'm asking because I wake up every morning and my first thought is whether you're safe, whether you're happy, whether you know that I would burn this entire city down before I'd let anything hurt you."

Victoria's eyes stung. Around them, women were clutching their hearts, men were watching with expressions ranging from envy to respect.

"I'm asking," King said, his dark eyes boring into hers with an intensity that made her feel stripped bare, "because I love you with an obsession that probably isn't healthy, and I don't give a damn. You're mine, Victoria.

You've been mine since the night I met you at that fundraiser and you laughed at my terrible joke about cryptocurrency. You're mine when you push me away, mine when you let me close, mine when you're driving me insane by leaving at 2AM instead of staying the night."

That last line held an edge of frustration. King had never understood why she wouldn't sleep over, why she always invented excuses to go home. The one time she'd dozed off at his penthouse, she'd jerked awake in a panic and fled, claiming an early meeting.

"So I'm asking you again, baby, for the third time,they say the third time's the charm." King's jaw tightened, and she saw the vulnerability beneath the alpha confidence, the fear beneath the certainty.

"Will you marry me? Will you let me spend the rest of my life proving that whatever walls you're hiding behind, whatever secrets you think will scare me away, I don't care? I just want you. All of you,forever."

Victoria's hand trembled as she reached toward him. Her throat tight, her vision blurring with tears. Yes! God, yes. She was so tired of running, so tired of fear controlling her life, so tired of keeping the man she loved at arm's length because of something she couldn't control.

"King," she whispered, her fingers brushing his jaw. "I…"

Her phone erupted with sound.

Not just a ring,her mother's special ringtone. A sharp, urgent series of beeps that cut through the romantic atmosphere like a gunshot.

Victoria's heart plummeted. "I'm sorry, I have to…"

"Answer it," King said immediately, rising to his feet," It’s fine,If your mother's calling, answer it."

Victoria grabbed her clutch and pulled out her phone. Her mother's name flashed on the screen. She swiped to answer, pressed the phone to her ear.

"Mom? What's wrong?"

The sound that came through the phone made Victoria's blood turn to ice. Sobbing. Her mother, who never cried in public, who prided herself on perfect composure, who'd taught Victoria that a politician's wife's greatest weapon was her unshakeable calm was sobbing so hard that she could barely breathe.

"Victoria baby you need…" Her mother's voice broke. "Come home. Right now. Please, come home"

"Mom, what happened?" Victoria was already standing, "Is it Uche?"

"Its your father" Another sob, wrenching and awful. "Victoria, your father collapsed at the rally. They tried…the paramedics tried, he's gone. Baby Your father is gone."

The restaurant spun. The champagne, the ring, the proposal, King's voice saying her name…it all blurred into white noise. Victoria heard someone make a sound like a wounded animal and realized distantly it was her.

"We're coming," King was saying, taking the phone from her nerveless fingers, speaking to her mother with calm authority. "Mrs. Okereke, we're leaving right now. Twenty minutes. Hold on."

He ended the call, pocketed her phone, and swept Victoria into his arms as her legs gave out.

"I've got you," King murmured against her hair, already moving toward the exit, his arm like an iron around her waist. "I've got you, baby. Whatever this is, I've got you."

But as they burst out into the December night,the city bright with Christmas lights suddenly seemed obscene,like the cheerful decorations were mocking her.

Her father was dead. Senator Donald Ikemba Okereke, "The Redeemer," the man who'd taught her to think and dream, the man who was supposed to walk her down the aisle,meet his grandchildren and grow old telling terrible granddad jokes.

Gone!

And she hadn't even said a proper yes to the proposal.