THE LOVE WE WERE FORBIDDEN TO NAME

THE LOVE WE WERE FORBIDDEN TO NAME A Forbidden Romance Novel Genre: Forbidden Romance, Family Drama, Secrets, Slow-Burn Love PROLOGUE The Boy in the Snow Munich, Germany. December 2008. Snow covered the gardens of the Lenz estate, turning the stone pathways white and the tall iron gates into something from a forgotten fairytale. Inside the mansion, a little girl sat beside the fireplace, watching her father speak to a stranger. The stranger was a boy. He looked about six years old, perhaps seven. His black hair fell messily across his forehead, and his grey eyes held an unsettling amount of silence for someone so young. His coat was too thin for the weather. His hands were red from the cold. "What's your name?" the little girl asked. The boy looked at her. "Levi." "Just Levi?" He nodded. She considered this for a moment before announcing, "I'm Anika Lenz." "I didn't ask." Her mouth fell open. Nobody had ever spoken to her like that. Her father cleared his throat to hide a laugh. "Levi will be staying with us," Richard explained. "From now on, this will be his home." Anika looked from her father to the boy. "Will he be my brother?" Richard exchanged a glance with his wife. "If that's what you both want." Anika immediately climbed down from the sofa and approached Levi. "Do you like chocolate?" He stared at her. "It's fine." "Do you like books?" "Sometimes." "Do you like talking?" "No." Anika frowned. "You're very difficult." "And you're very loud." For the first time that evening, Levi's mouth twitched into something almost resembling a smile. Anika held out her favourite blue scarf. "Here. You look cold." "I don't need it." "Take it." "No." "I'm telling my father you refused a gift." Levi stared at her for several seconds. Then he took the scarf. Anika smiled triumphantly. "Good. Now we're friends." Levi looked towards the tall windows, where the snow continued to fall. Friends. He had forgotten what the word felt like. He did not know that the little girl standing before him would one day become the one person he could never bear to lose. And she did not know that the boy in the snow would eventually become the greatest secret of her life. CHAPTER ONE Sixteen Years Later The black Mercedes stopped outside the Lenz estate just after sunset. Anika stepped out, removed her sunglasses, and stared at the mansion she had spent the last three years trying to escape. Munich was beautiful in winter. The streets glowed beneath golden lamps, cafés steamed with the smell of coffee, and snowflakes drifted lazily over the rooftops. But the Lenz estate had never felt warm to her. It was too grand. Too quiet. Too full of rules. "Welcome home, Miss Lenz," the driver said. Anika offered him a smile. "Please, Klaus. We've known each other for years. You can call me Anika." He chuckled. "Your father would disagree." "My father disagrees with breathing if I do it without his permission." She dragged her suitcase towards the entrance. The front door opened before she reached it. And there he was. Levi Ackerman. Twenty-four years old. Dressed in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, his dark hair neatly trimmed, his expression as unreadable as ever. He looked older than she remembered. Sharper. Colder. Annoyingly handsome. Anika stopped walking. Levi glanced at her suitcase. "You brought half the university with you?" She blinked. "Nice to see you too, Levi." "You were supposed to arrive yesterday." "I changed my flight." "Of course you did." She walked past him into the mansion. "Did you miss me?" "No." "Liar." Levi shut the door. "You've been home for twelve seconds, and you're already irritating me." Anika turned around, grinning. "And you've been home for sixteen years, and you're still miserable." For a moment, they simply stared at each other. Then Anika laughed. Levi looked away, but not before she caught the faintest change in his expression. She had missed him. Far more than she was prepared to admit. And as Levi watched her disappear up the staircase, he realised something equally inconvenient. Her return was going to make everything much harder. Because the girl he had once promised to protect was no longer a child. And the feelings he had spent years refusing to name were becoming impossible to ignore. THE STORY CONTINUES... Anika and Levi are not related by blood, but they were raised in the same family. As their feelings become harder to ignore, family expectations, secrets about Levi's adoption, and a future neither of them planned threaten to pull them apart. Will they protect the family that brought them together, or will the truth force them to choose a different future? To be continued...