VELVET TRIGGER

You don’t fall in love in a world like this. You survive it. The first time she heard his name, it was encrypted — tangled in blackmail files and ghost code, like a shadow pretending not to exist. Dominic Moretti. It wasn’t supposed to matter. Alessia Voss didn’t care about names. Not in her line of work. She deleted identities for breakfast, tied up loose ends for people who made them with blood and money. Her clients were kings and cowards — untouchable, invisible. He was neither. And yet, even now, long after fire licked through their lives and loyalty rotted from the inside out. She still remembered the way he looked at her that night in her room. Scotch in one hand. Pistol in the other. Like he could burn the world down, and only save her from the ashes. She remembered the silence before the storm, the way his eyes measured her — calm, dangerous, like he knew her better than she knew herself. The faintest curve of a smirk tugged at his lips as if he dared the world to try. Her pulse had raced, a warning she ignored. She shouldn’t have done it, but at that instant, danger and desire collided, and she had wanted it anyway.