All Chapters of ESSENCE: Desire Without Permission — My Rivals, My Red Flags: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The heart did not stop. Instead, it hammered against his ribs with a new, frantic velocity. Anji collapsed onto his side, his breath hitching in his chest as the searing heat in his blood began to settle into a cold, hummed frequency. He forced his eyes open. The basement was no longer just a room. Every speck of dust dancing in the air looked like a suspended diamond. Every shadow had depth, a velvet weight that felt heavy enough to touch. He pushed himself up, his muscles feeling coiled, supple, and lethal. He stood, and for the first time in his life, he did not feel small. He felt like a predator wearing a human skin.He stumbled toward the stairwell, his legs moving with a fluid grace that defied his exhaustion. He gripped the metal railing, and the cool steel felt like an extension of his own fingers. By the time he reached the main floor of the office, the sun was already bleeding through the glass panes of the lobby. He caught his reflection in a passing window. His eyes were

The steel doors rattled in their tracks as the elevator descended, but the silence inside the small metal box was deafening. Anji pressed his back against the cool wall, his chest heaving with shallow, jagged breaths. The sensation of Arga’s hand against the door was still vibrating in his mind, a lingering ghost of pressure that made his own skin prickle with an uncomfortable, crawling heat. He looked at his reflection in the mirrored panel. He appeared pale, his eyes wide and glassy, and a sheen of cold sweat coated his forehead. The high of the board meeting was completely gone. In its place was a hollow, aching emptiness that gnawed at his gut, an agonizing hunger that felt like his nervous system was unspooling.The elevator hit the ground floor with a soft chime. Anji stumbled out into the lobby. The building was vast, filled with the hum of climate control and the distant clicking of keyboards. He felt like a fever patient wandering through a blizzard. Every sound was too loud.

Arga did not release his grip on Anji. His hand remained a steady, cold pressure against Anji’s jaw, effectively pinning him in place as the stranger in the gray suit approached. Anji felt his heart hammer against his ribs. The man’s arrival was like a splash of ice water on his overheated skin. He tried to pull his gaze away from Arga to study the newcomer, but the contact with his boss held his senses in a vice."I do not recall scheduling any meetings for today," Arga said. His voice was flat and devoid of any warmth. He did not move his hand, nor did he allow Anji to adjust his stance. He remained a wall of professional ice, staring down the man who had dared to walk into the lobby unannounced.The newcomer smiled. It was a practiced, hollow expression that did not reach his cold eyes. He stopped five paces away, his hands folded neatly in front of him. "My name is He Sanaa. I represent interests that find your recent business expansion particularly... interesting. Specifically, t

The corporate office of the building—formerly an impenetrable fortress of executive hubris—had become a petri dish for the Architect’s cold agenda. Anji walked down the hall, his footsteps falling with a precision that was no longer his own. His senses, once chaotic and screaming, were now filtered through a glass pane of icy efficiency. Beside him, the Architect walked with the leisurely gait of an owner inspecting his livestock.In the suite where Arga had recently held court, the surveillance apparatus hummed. The walls themselves seemed to be listening. Tucked away in a soundproof server room on the floor below, a pair of night-shift security techs, oblivious to the high-level shifts above them, were glued to the monitors."Look at 04-B," Miki murmured, his voice laced with the lethargy of 3:00 AM coffee consumption. He nudged his partner, Dave. "Why is Arga sitting in the dark?"On the grainy black-and-white feed, the Executive Suite appeared as a void. Arga sat behind his mahoga

The fluorescent lights in the penthouse conference room were a mockery of natural order, casting a surgical, clinical glow over the chaos. Anji sat at the center of a black obsidian table, his fingers tracing the edge of a new document. He was, to the casual observer, a picture of corporate calm. Beneath the tailored wool of his blazer, however, his veins felt like conduits of liquid electricity.Arga was gone, relegated to the outer office, tasked with “clearing the schedule”—a polite euphemism for suppressing the memories of the night before. Across the table sat Broto, the logistics kingpin whose massive, bear-like presence seemed to dwarf the room. Beside him sat He Sanaa, the Architect’s personal viper, his eyes flicking toward Anji with a curiosity that felt like an incision.“You’ve been busy, Anji,” Broto rumbled, his gravelly voice vibrating the crystal decanter on the table. He didn't look like the man who had signed the merger under a hypnotic daze; the influence was waning,