Voren had driven into the hotel with a very specific purpose in mind, his schedule already tight and his patience running thin from the urgency of the meeting he had arranged with a business partner, and the last thing he expected was to come face to face with someone he would have preferred never to encounter again.
"Mr. Ashkael, we meet again."
The voice came smooth and slow, almost lazy in its delivery, but the weight behind it was anything but casual, and Voren didn’t need to look twice to recognize the man standing across from him, a cigar resting at the corner of his lips, dressed head to toe in pristine white like something out of a twisted illusion of purity.
Don Santiago Russo stood there like a fallen angel who had perfected the art of disguise, because under that polished exterior was something far darker, that had earned him a reputation whispered in places most people didn’t even know existed.
"That means I slept on the wrong side of the bed," Voren replied, his tone cold enough to strip any warmth from the air between them, his eyes narrowing just slightly as he took in the man before him.
Wherever Santiago went, chaos followed, and Voren knew that better than most, because if there was one thing he had learned over the years, it was that Santiago didn’t move without purpose, and whatever that purpose was, it was never harmless.
"I’m surprised," he looked around curiously. "Where are those thugs of yours?" He asked sarcastically, referring to Santiago’s unruly bodyguards.
A faint smile curled Santiago’s lips as he responded calmly. "I have eyes on a woman. I just feel the presence of my bodyguards might scare her."
Voren raised a brow but did not say anymore, wondering who that unfortunate woman was.
The timing of their arrival only made things worse, both stepping into the luxury hotel restaurant at the exact same moment, their presence instantly commanding attention in a way that made it seem to anyone watching from the outside, as though they were associates rather than enemies bound by a long history of silent war.
Santiago was not just another wealthy man with influence, or a figure operating in the shadows of power, because his reach extended into places that were rotten at their core, into dealings that left traces of destruction no one could ever quite pin on him.
And although Voren could connect him to countless acts of corruption and ruin across the world, there was never a single piece of evidence strong enough to bring him down, because Santiago had mastered the art of erasing his tracks so completely that it was almost as if they had never existed at all.
That was exactly why he remained untouchable, and dangerous.
Today, his presence here was not a coincidence. Santiago had come with intent, his attention already locked onto someone he had been watching from afar, someone who had captured his interest in a way that very few ever managed to do, and it didn’t take long for him to find her once he stepped inside.
His gaze landed on her almost instantly, drawn in as if by instinct, the woman in the red dress standing out effortlessly against everything around her, commanding attention without even trying, but the moment his eyes registered the man whose arm rested around her, something inside him tightened sharply, a reaction so immediate it bordered on irritation.
He bit down harder on his cigar, the faint tension in his jaw betraying the change in his mood, because the information he had been given painted a very different picture.
She had a boyfriend but he knew that man so well to know that whatever relationship they claimed to have was not real and yet, what he was seeing now didn’t quite align with that narrative.


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