Chapter 5
711 Words
CHAPTER FIVE
FLASHBACK — One Year Ago
Location: Milan, Italy
Event: Global Luxury Innovation Conference
The first time Luna Knight saw Cassian Laurel up close, he was already laughing at her.
Not at her, exactly — more like beside her, at a private after-party where legacy heirs mingled like predators in silk suits, sipping hundred-year-old wine and pretending they hadn’t been bred for war.
She’d just finished eviscerating a junior executive from another conglomerate who made the mistake of calling her “princess.” When she turned away, drink in hand, she found him leaning against the bar — black suit, no tie, and a crooked smile like he could see every weapon she was trying to hide.
“Remind me never to call you that,” he said.
Luna raised an eyebrow. “What? Princess?”
He grinned wider. “Exactly. I prefer ‘threat.’ Feels more honest.”
She didn’t smile. She never did, not around strangers.
And especially not around Cassian Laurel — heir to the empire her father called a “rotting empire of machines and bullets.” She knew his face from files. Her family kept entire dossiers on the Laurels. Ruthless. Reckless. Dangerous.
But no dossier had warned her how alive he looked under low lighting — sleeves rolled, whiskey in hand, shadows curling against the sharp cut of his jaw.
“You’re bold,” she said.
“And you’re beautiful when you’re pissed off,” he replied smoothly.
She hated him already.
She hated the smirk.
She hated the fact that he noticed her. Really saw her. Not as a name, not as a threat — but as a woman who’d walked into this room carrying armor like a clutch.
So naturally, she stayed.
They didn’t talk business.
They didn’t talk war.
They talked nothing for two hours.
And then came the elevator.
They were alone. Too much wine. Too little space. The air was electric — the kind that made her forget last names and legacy deals.
“You’re not what I expected,” he said.
She looked up. “And what did you expect?”
“A robot. Polished and empty. Pretty little viper.”
She smiled then — slow and dangerous. “And now?”
His eyes dropped to her mouth. “Still a viper. Just not so little.”
The elevator stopped at her floor.
She should’ve walked out.
Should’ve said goodnight.
But when she stepped out, she didn’t hear the door close behind her.
Cassian followed.
“Do you make it a habit of following your enemies to their rooms?” she asked, turning halfway, pulse loud in her ears.
“No,” he said, stepping closer. “Just the ones who make breathing feel optional.”
The tension snapped like a live wire.
She kissed him first.
Or maybe he kissed her.
It didn’t matter.
The hallway blurred. The room door slammed. He tasted like fire and midnight and something far too dangerous to name. His hands didn’t hesitate. Neither did hers. Suits fell like lies, buttons tearing, breath catching.
It wasn’t soft.
It wasn’t romantic.
It was war.
It was release.
It was two people raised to conquer — finally choosing each other over the empires they were born into.
Later, tangled in sheets that weren’t hers, her chest rising too fast, she whispered, “This never happened.”
Cassian turned his head. “Then I must be hallucinating.”
She rolled away.
“You’re a Laurel.”
He stared at the ceiling. “And you’re a knight.”
They both knew what that meant.
This was a one-time thing. A heat-of-the-moment, never-again kind of mistake.
But as the hours passed and the morning light spilled through the curtains, Luna still hadn’t left the bed.
And Cassian hadn’t stopped watching her.
When she finally pulled her dress back on, his voice stopped her at the door.
“If I told you I didn’t regret it, would you stay?”
She didn’t answer.
She just closed the door behind her.
And for the first time in her perfectly constructed life, her hands trembled.
That was how it started.
One mistake.
One night.
One kiss they’d spend a year pretending meant nothing — while it quietly ruined them both.
- Writer
