GUARDED FLAMES

Evangeline I was seventeen when I first saw him—tall, quiet, and covered in blood that wasn’t his. Nikolai Vance. I stood at the top of the staircase in my father’s mansion, barefoot and furious because he’d just canceled my Paris trip again. I was ready to unleash hell on the next poor soul who dared look me in the eye—until I saw him. He didn’t flinch under the chandelier’s light or the weight of my father’s glare. He walked into that marble foyer like he’d done it a hundred times before. Like he wasn’t tracking blood across ten-thousand-dollar rugs or wearing the tension of a man who knew what death smelled like. My father stood between us, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “This is Nikolai. He’ll be your shadow from now on.” My heart dropped. My what? I opened my mouth to protest—probably with some bratty remark—but then I caught Nikolai’s eyes. Not brown. Not black. Just… cold. Grey like stone. Winter eyes. And they were staring at me like they could see straight through the designer clothes, the perfectly done hair, the attitude I wore like armor. He didn’t smile. Didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. Just watched. And something in my chest—something small and foolish—tightened. I didn’t know then who he was. Not really. Didn’t know that under those eyes lived a graveyard of memories too painful to speak of. Didn’t know that his silence was his shield. Or that he was already bleeding on the inside from wounds he’d never let anyone dress. All I knew was this: he didn’t look at me the way every other man did. Not like a spoiled heiress. Not like a prize. And definitely not like a job. He looked at me like I was dangerous. It should’ve scared me. But instead—I wanted to know what it would take to make him break. I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of everything. The beginning of war. Of heat. Of love that would ruin us both.