Chapter three- The edge of control

The city lights blurred through my office window, but my mind was sharper than ever—sharp, fractured, and dangerous. Selene’s face haunted every quiet moment, her laugh echoing in my skull like a siren I could not ignore. I should have been reviewing contracts, analyzing numbers, securing my empire. Instead, my thoughts circled her, over and over, a tempest I couldn’t calm.

It started small. A missed call. A delayed response. A signature I didn’t double-check. Normally, I was meticulous—flawless. Every decision precise, every movement calculated. But obsession doesn’t ask permission. Desire doesn’t respect schedules, priorities, or logic. By the time I noticed, the first cracks had already appeared.

Marcus knocked softly at the door, holding a neatly stacked folder. “Mr. Voss… Edward’s team wanted this reviewed before morning.” His tone was polite, deferential, but I felt the weight of every eye in the office watching, even in his silence. Every minor slip could ripple into disaster, and yet here I was, distracted, unraveling.

I scanned the documents, forcing my attention onto ink and numbers. Yet every line reminded me of her. Selene. Dangerous. Electric. My pulse quickened involuntarily. I cursed under my breath, shaking my head as if sheer will could erase her image from my mind. It did nothing. Desire didn’t work that way. It festered. It lingered. It grew.

Hours passed, contracts reviewed imperfectly, calls returned late, emails drafted and discarded. And still, she existed in every shadow of my office, in every fleeting memory of her movements, every imagined smile, every tilt of her head.

Later, the board meeting with Edward present felt like a battlefield. Men in tailored suits, polished voices, careful handshakes. Everything that should have mattered—numbers, contracts, leverage—blurred behind the gravity of her presence. My chest tightened the instant I saw her across the polished table. Just a flicker of her gaze, and my control wavered, betraying the armor I had spent years cultivating.

Edward’s eyes caught mine, subtle but precise. Calm, measuring. I knew he noticed. He always notices. A dangerous acknowledgment, like a predator marking territory—not openly, but enough to remind me where I stood.

Across the table, Victor Lang whispered to Lila Monroe. Evelyn Drake’s gaze lingered a moment too long. Everyone in this room sensed the tension that I tried to hide behind my composed exterior, but none of them knew the true danger—the one that lurked in thought, in heartbeat, in fleeting, forbidden desire. They couldn’t. Only I could feel it consuming me from within.

Time slowed during that meeting. Every word I spoke, every nod, every carefully crafted response carried the weight of self-restraint, yet the tension under my skin pulsed like wildfire. The numbers, contracts, strategies—they all faded. Her presence overrode them, an uninvited, irresistible force. I could feel the edges of my empire trembling beneath me, not because of Edward or his associates, but because of desire—my weakness made flesh.

After the meeting ended, I moved through the corridors as if on a tightrope. Every glance over my shoulder reminded me that I was a man walking on a knife’s edge. And then, as if fate itself orchestrated it, Selene appeared.

Her arm brushed against mine in the hallway—soft, almost accidental, but electric. My chest tightened, my pulse hammered, and my carefully constructed control faltered. It was innocent… and yet it wasn’t. I felt the pull, the inevitability, the spark that threatened to ignite everything I had worked to maintain.

The war had escalated. Treason wasn’t a choice anymore. Desire had won its first victories, and I was losing, slowly, inevitably, gloriously. Every heartbeat reminded me: I had already begun to unravel.

And she—Selene—was the flame.