The notification chimed like a grenade pin hitting marble.
Luna stared at her phone, the pixelated ghost of her hot spring photo burning through the screen. She'd sent it to Caleb. Not Lila. Not her spam folder. To the man whose tailored suits hid scars she'd mapped in midnight confessions.
Their WeChat thread glowed accusingly. Peace deal terms, they'd called it—this digital tether between a woman who dismantled dynasties and a ghost who built them. His profile photo glared back: a blurred corporate headshot, all sharp jawline and eyes like smoked glass.
Lila's messages erupted in a flurry of emojis and lingerie links. VS drop alert! Silk or lace? Translucent or strategic cutouts?
Luna hurled her phone across the four-poster bed. It skidded to rest against the headboard's Thorn family crest, the obsidian viper seeming to smirk.
—
Thirty thousand feet above the Bering Strait, Caleb Thorn's private jet hummed with the sterile efficiency of an operating theater. Executives in Brioni suits flinched as his gold-plated Montblanc tapped quarterly reports. The sound syncopated with turbulence—tap-tap-CRASH—until a softer chime fractured the rhythm.
All eyes dropped to the CEO's phone.
Caleb swiped right.
The boardroom's oxygen vanished.
There she was—steam rising off geothermal pools in Hakone, water droplets clinging to scars and secrets alike. The grass-green swimsuit clung to curves he'd only traced through linen veils. His thumb hovered over the screen, index finger brushing the healed bullet wound above her hipbone—a mirror to his own.
Teasing me?
He typed with the precision of a missile launch code.
—
Luna's choked laugh echoed through the manor's gun room. Rows of antique flintlocks watched as she typed: What if I said I sent it by mistake?
The three dots pulsed.
Who did you mean to send it to?
She screenshot Lila's lingerie spam—cherry-red negligees and thigh-high stockings—and fired it back.
Caleb's reply arrived as his Gulfstream pierced cloud cover: Buy them all. Try them on. I'll critique the collection.
The pen snapped in his fist. Black ink bled across Singapore's merger proposal like a Rorschach test of distraction.
—
Xavier Su's penthouse reeked of betrayal and Dom Pérignon '45. Claire's manicure dug crescent moons into his shoulder as she monologued about paternal neglect.
"—and Daddy keeps that bitch's photo in his—"
"Enough."
The word left frost on the champagne flute. Claire recoiled as Xavier crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows, Tokyo's skyline stretching below like a circuit board of vendettas.
Luna's mother had laughed here once, her ink paintings still hidden behind the Rothko forgery. Xavier's finger traced the hidden compartment's edge. She'd taught him to appreciate the weight of a silenced pistol, the poetry of corporate espionage.
"You're still obsessed," Claire hissed.
Xavier watched his reflection fracture in the bulletproof glass. Obsession was for amateurs. What festered in his marrow was simpler—the cold calculus of losing to a ghost.
—
Luna's finger hovered over Caleb's last message: I'll deal with you when I return.
The manor's grandfather clock tolled three a.m., its pendulum slicing shadows into ribbons. Somewhere below, the east wing's armory door creaked—a draft, or Grayson polishing silverware meant to survive nuclear winter.
She typed: Rogue.
Caleb's response came as dawn gilded Dubai's minarets: You named the game, Mrs. Thorn.
Her phone slipped into the silk abyss of unused pillows. In the solarium below, the mutated belladonna Caleb had engineered from Amazonian toxins unfurled a new blossom—black petals veined with poison green.
Luna smiled.
Let him think he'd won this round.
The real war lived in the spaces between pixels and pulse points, in the way his three-word promise had rewritten her breathing.
I'll deal with you.
As threats went, it lacked creativity.
As foreplay?
Devastating.
The penthouse suite reeked of betrayal and overpriced cologne. Claire's manicured fingers trembled against the Egyptian cotton sheets as Xavier's shadow loomed like a storm cloud over the bed. Moonlight sliced through half-drawn curtains, illuminating the vein throbbing at his temple.
"You think I don't know?" His whiskey-roughened voice scraped against the silence. "Those late-night board meetings. The 'charity galas'."
Claire's nervous laugh echoed hollowly. "Darling, you're being—"
The crystal tumbler exploded against the wall, shards raining down like fractured promises. "Don't insult me."
She flinched, the ice in his eyes freezing the protest on her lips. This wasn't the charming heir who'd showered her with Cartier baubles. This was the real Xavier Su - the boardroom predator who'd eviscerated rivals before breakfast meetings.
His knuckle whitened around the decanter's neck. "The Thorn family's been sniffing around our shipping routes. That bastard Caleb's bought three of our junior executives."
Claire's breath hitched. The Thorn name carried weight even in hushed conversations - whispers of private armies and political puppeteering that made old money dynasties shudder.
"Luna's just his plaything," she spat, desperation curdling her tone. "Some country whore he'll discard once—"
Xavier's backhand cracked through the lie. Claire's head snapped sideways, blood blooming like poppies against snow-white linen.
"Careful." He caught her jaw in a vise grip, thumb pressing cruelly against her windpipe. "That 'whore' could buy your bloodline ten times over."
The suite's antique clock ticked through suffocating silence. Somewhere below, midnight traffic hummed along the Bund, oblivious to the vipers nesting in ivory towers.
—
Luna's cottage smelled of rosemary and gun oil. Moonlight bled through moth-eaten curtains as she stared at the burner phone vibrating on the kitchen table. The caller ID flashed like a cobra's warning - Unknown Number.
She answered on the seventh ring.
"8206 room. Tomorrow night." Xavier's voice slithered through the receiver. "Don't make me send escorts."
The line went dead.
Her fist clenched around the carved jade pendant - her mother's final gift, edges worn smooth from years of anxious rubbing. Lin Aunt's weathered face swam in memory - the maid who'd smuggled her out that blood-drenched night, whose disappearance had left more questions than the police report.
The Glock 19 hidden in the flour jar called sweetly. Luna traced its cold contours, the weight familiar as childhood trauma.
—
Caleb's private jet screamed through cumulonimbus clouds, turbulence mirroring the storm in his chest. The encrypted tablet glowed with satellite images - Xavier's Shanghai stronghold marked in pulsing red.
"ETA twenty minutes, sir." The pilot's voice crackled through intercom static.
He thumbed Luna's last text, the pixelated swimsuit photo burning brighter than the emergency exit signs. His finger hovered over the call button when the cabin door burst open.
"Sir! Perimeter breach at the Hangzhou facility—"
The explosion ripped through night vision goggles. Gravel bit into Kevlar as Caleb rolled behind smoldering concrete. Shanghai's skyline burned in the distance, Thorn Tower's silhouette bleeding into mushroom-cloud orange.
—
The hotel corridor stretched like a funeral procession. Luna's stilettos clicked a war drum rhythm against marble floors, the 8206 room number glowing like a sniper's laser sight.
Xavier opened the door shirtless, vodka and malice wafting from his pores. "Still playing the virtuous widow?"
She stepped into the lion's den, handbag weighted with more than lipstick. "Where's Lin Aunt?"
His laugh curdled the air. "Straight to business? No pleasantries about—"
The bathroom door creaked. A silver-haired woman emerged, rheumy eyes widening at the sight of Luna.
"Xiao-Yue?" The whisper tore through decades of silence. "You look... just like her."
Luna's world tilted. The birthmark. The cadence of her mother's nickname. The truth detonated in her chest—
Glass shattered.
Xavier's body hit the minibar with bone-crunching finality, Caleb's fist buried in his solar plexus. Blood and vodka pooled around broken bottles as security swarmed the suite.
"Run!" Lin Aunt's gnarled hands shoved Luna toward the fire escape. "They'll kill you like they killed her—"
The gunshot echoed.
Luna turned in time to see the old woman crumple, crimson blooming across her qipao's faded peonies. Xavier's smoking Beretta clattered to the floor, his smirk dying as Caleb's bullet found its mark between his eyes.
—
Dawn found them in the safe house's surgical glare. Luna stared at Caleb stitching his own bullet graze, the swimsuit photo burning a hole in both their pockets.
"You came."
His needle paused. "Always."
The unspoken confession hung between them - in the tremor of his suturing fingers, the way her palm fit against his bloody knuckles. Somewhere beyond the bulletproof glass, Shanghai wept acid rain.
The game had changed.
And in the wreckage of burned bridges and blood oaths, something far more dangerous than lust took root.