Cassian didn't dream.
He planned. He calculated. He moved.
But when sleep finally came—those rare, dangerous hours when his walls loosened—the only thing that ever waited on the other side was her.
The girl from the gala.
The girl with cracked breath and shaking hands and wild, unfiltered eyes.
Ziva.
It wasn't supposed to last.
She had been a mistake in a perfect room. An error in programming. A ripple in the glass.
He should've forgotten her.
She didn't even remember him.
But the Drevault bloodline was a curse disguised as gold, and Cassian had inherited all of it—every inch of steel wrapped in control. Except when it came to her.
Because something about her presence—brief, accidental, frantic—had imprinted.
She had spilled wine on a ten-thousand-dollar suit.
She had apologized like the world might end.
She had looked at him like a person—not a weapon.
And in the stillness that followed, everything changed.
---
He had found her name two days after the gala.
Not because he was searching for her.
Because the thought of not knowing made his skin crawl.
Ziva Mace.
Twenty at the time. Working three part-time jobs. Student loans. No parents listed. One emergency contact. No criminal record. A fire in her apartment history—small, suspicious, closed without answers.
Cassian had read every detail like scripture.
And then, he had watched.
Not through tinted windows and cloaked cars—no. That was beneath him.
He watched by knowing.
He had people who reported movements. He owned the buildings she passed through. He adjusted her job schedule without her knowing. Gave anonymous donations to the libraries she loved. Installed new security cameras in the building across from her third-floor window.
Not because he wanted to harm her.
He just… couldn't not see her.
Every time she smiled at someone else, something in him twitched.
Every time she struggled, he struggled worse.
And when she cried?
He sat in the dark and bled inside the silence.
---
Now, three years later, Cassian Drevault stood in the boardroom of his empire, glass walls behind him, city below him, and a legacy curled beneath his shoes.
His father was dead.
His mother was broken.
And the world expected him to marry.
He was thirty-one. Powerful. Beautiful. Single.
The vultures had already started circling.
Women in navy suits with steel agendas. Heiresses whose last names meant nothing to him. Soft eyes. Hard ambition. Empty words.
His mother had told him gently, "You need someone beside you now, Cassian. The world's watching."
But Cassian wasn't watching the world.
He was watching her.
Ziva Mace.
Still living. Still breathing. Still untouched by him—physically, anyway.
But she had haunted his every decision.
And now?
It was time.
Not to win her.
Not to earn her.
To take her.
Not cruelly. Not violently.
Just… undeniably.
He would offer her a world no one else could.
Not because she asked.
But because she didn't need to.
She was already his.
She just didn't know it yet.
---
Cassian moved through the halls of the Drevault tower in silence. The people who saw him bowed their heads or stepped aside entirely. There was no noise in his presence. Just respect. Or fear. Or both.
He entered his private suite at the top.
Glass. Leather. Minimalist shadows.
The walls knew every breath he took. And behind one of those walls — inside a locked room that no one else entered — was a screen.
Only one feed played now.
A quiet street.
A simple apartment building.
And through one window?
Her.
She was laughing at something. Tossing her hair. Wearing mismatched socks.
Cassian watched.
He said nothing.
Just let the silence stretch.
Soon, he'd move.
Soon, the shadow he'd kept behind would become flesh and voice and breath.
But not just yet.
The moment had to be right.
Because once he stepped into her life…
There'd be no going back.
For either of them.
---