It's simple. A vengeful wildfire of a woman. A tyrant who begs to be burned.  

When Aria crashes into Kael’s empire, hellbent on making him pay for taking her job away, she’s met not with defiance—but a dare. “You want revenge?” he taunts, voice dripping with dark invitation. 

“Then ruin me. Take your pound of flesh exactly where it hurts.” His proposition is a trap laced with sin: As expected he calls the shots in his bed, her contempt is his twisted aphrodisiac. 

“Hate me until your hands shake,” he growls. “But do it on top of me, where I can watch you savor every cut.”  

Their arrangement is a collision of dominance and delirium. Aria wields her fury like a blade, determined to break him. Kael? He thrives under her wrath, goading her darker, deeper, hungrier. 

But vengeance turns slippery when every insult she hisses ignites his obsession, and every cold glare melts into bruising kisses. Soon, the bed becomes a battleground—her nails carving victory into his skin, his whispers a serpent’s promise: “Chain me with your rage, darling. I’ll still come back for more."  

The rules are simple: No mercy. No surrender. But as their games spiral into something ravenous, who’s destroying whom? And when hatred burns this hot, what’s left when the ashes cool?

She left with those words clinging to the air like fog. "Don't die before me."


She didn't say she missed me. But her silence screamed it.


And God, I wanted to go after her. I wanted to grab her, hold her, tell her I'd been coming every night like a fucking ghost just to see her from afar because I didn't know if she wanted me close anymore.


But I didn't move. I stood there under the weak, flickering light of the hallway, watching the place where she disappeared.


I thought she didn't need me. Not anymore.


She had Sarah. Olivia. Kaleb. The warmth of family wrapped around her like a shield, and I was the outsider. The man who made her cry too many times.


But the tremble in her voice, the way her eyes flickered with something unsaid, it told a different story.


Chapter 159 - Time of Death