Xeha grew up seeing Kalim around her home as her father's most trusted best friend and business partner. Kalim was a quiet, imposing figure, masculine, stern, and respected by everyone. Though he always treated Xeha with distant respect, she developed a deep, unrequited crush on him that matured into an intense passion as she grew older. Knowing the scandal it would cause, she kept her feelings buried.To secure a massive family business merger, Xeha’s father arranged her marriage to a wealthy heir. Xeha tried to accept her fate, but as the wedding day approached, the thought of belonging to another man broke her. She couldn't walk down the aisle with a lie in her heart.Desperate to escape the forced marriage and her family's control, Xeha fled the rest house right before the ceremony. She remembered her father once mentioning a remote, off the grid estate tucked deep in a distant province, a place so isolated that no one from her high-society life would ever think to look for her.What she didn't realize was that the sanctuary she remembered reading about wasn't just a piece of land her father talked about, it was Kalim's private retreat, the one place he went when he wanted to completely disappear from the world.