PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE:

The world stopped for Alexander Robinson not in the boardroom, not during a hostile takeover, but in the stale, over-perfumed ballroom of a high school charity gala.

He was thirty seven, a man whose existence was dictated by calculated moves and predictable outcomes. Then, he saw her.

She was fifteen, leaning against a velvet rope, a beacon of ethereal grace in a cheap dress. He didn't know her name, only the gentle cadence of her laugh and the way the light caught the dark, soft fall of her hair. In that moment, the concrete foundation of his life cracked. A piece of his soul he hadn't known was missing suddenly clicked into place, and it had her face. Possession. Not a want, but an instinct. A fatal, defining need.

He moved to find her, to secure his prize, but she vanished into the crowd like a ghost, leaving him with a hollow ache and a burning, three-year sickness. He had wealth, power, and a network that spanned the globe, yet he couldn't track down one high school girl. The failure was an agony, the desire a constant, raw edge in his mind.

He learned to live with the haunting—until the summer his elder brother married.

Alexander stood stiffly through the reception, the polite facade of family life chafing at his skin. The bride—his new sister-in-law, a rare venture into familial obligation—approached, pulling a girl forward with a proud smile.

"Alex, I want you to meet my daughter," the bride chirped. "This is Sofia Seraphina."

Time didn't just stop; it rewound. The world went silent, just as it had three years prior, only now the ghost was solid, present, and terrifyingly real. The girl who had haunted his every waking thought, the obsession that had driven him half-mad, was standing before him, a woman on the cusp of adulthood.

And she was forbidden. His step-niece.

The barrier—the familial connection, the age difference, the sheer audacity of the desire—was clear, rigid, and undeniable. In that instant, Alexander didn't see a wall. He saw the ultimate conquest. The challenge he had waited for.

He had waited for her to grow up, unknowingly, for three years. Now that she was here, within his reach, bound to him by the same family that should keep them apart, he was not going to wait a moment longer.

He smiled, a cold, predatory shift of his lips that only she, unknowingly, had the power to invoke. He extended his hand, meeting her gaze with the promise of utter ruin.

She is mine to protect. Mine to love. Mine to own, body and soul. The darkness has waited long enough.