I knew that the moment I passed that threshold, I was heading for certain doom.
It wasn't the arrogance of the architecture itself, or even its employees who exuded icy self-confidence, which frightened me. It was him.
My half-bro
The ruler of this empire.
Loved the one in secret, with a passion that should never, ever have endured through childhood years.
I stood up straight and fought with the wildly pounding heart.
Five years, Lylie!
Living together for five years now, repressing my screams, dampening my sighs.
In this city, everybody knew the adopted daughter of the most influential family in the country, yet nobody thought she was working here, under a different name, in the nighttime world that went unseen. And most certainly not him.
Not yet.
"Breathe…" I said into his ear.
It had been a cathedral of glass and steel, a great and unforgiving hall in which I wished to become a part of the background, a ghost. I'd grown up with opulence around me, yet I'd never found a home.
Adopted at fifteen, I had been welcomed as one of the family… but my blood would never bear their name.
And then, there was him.
Forever my protector, my only anchor, my forbidden love. Always that guardian look, watching over me as if I were a fragile little sister.
And I devoured him with my eyes like forbidden fruit-the kind you're not allowed to covet, much less touch.
"Miss? Your badge."
The voice of the receptionist snapped me out of my reverie. After examining my papers, she returned it to me with a pleasant smile.
"Welcome to the team."
If you knew the kind of fire that I was about to jump into.
I quickly entered the elevator. With each passing floor, the air seemed to thin out. I kept telling myself that he could be too high up to notice a mere new recruit.
A CEO of his stature does not look down on the common masses.
The doors opened.
The time appeared to stand still.
He stood there in the middle of the corridor as a natural phenomenon among his underlings.
His towering height, coupled with his abyssal-black suit, made him a commanding figure. His facial expression had the smoothness of marble - unmoving and frigid.
Then came a shift in his eyes.
Our eyes met.
The chaos around us melted into an Arctic silence. In that instant, a glimpse of surprise flashed on his face, and that brief flicker gave way to the same look of visceral worry that I had seen when I was a kid and trying to hide my wounds.
"Lylie"...
It was not an order. It was a whisper. A confession.
The staff held collective breath. The fact that this name came from him and in this place and time was a strange phenomenon.
"Hello."
I managed to get out, my throat parched. He closed the distance between us. With every step, there was less space between us.
Until it was choking me. His smell, that woody, attractive aroma that consumed my dreams, engulfed my being.
"What are you doing here?" he muttered, his voice now hoarse.
The inflection of his voice was more disturbing than any shout could have been.
"I… I am beginning my first day."
His eyebrows furrowed. It wasn't anger; it was some sort of inner struggle that had beset him.
"You should have told me."
"I wanted to exist on my own. Without your shadow."
He looked at me with burning eyes, as if to catch all my secrets. A deep sigh lifted his chest.
"This world is a den of wolves," he said in the faintest of tones, almost to us alone.
"Don't leave me."
On the faces that surrounded me, shock was frozen. An impressively powerful CEO, one that people firmly claimed was devoid of feelings, just built a wall for a stranger.
And then, I realized something that left me speechless:
What duty had compelled him to swear he would protect. He was now on fire with longing to possess her. And I no longer have the strength to fight him.