THE BILLIONAIRE'S FORBIDDEN OBSESSION

FINDING GABRIEL 2

Nerie looked up at Chen, forcing the tears back into her eyes. She needed to get close to Gabriel. She needed to infiltrate his life, find out where his deep-sea project was operated from, and stop the neural-pulse weapons before her entire race was eradicated.

back

"I am fine," Neri managed to say, as she used the human language she had spent months mastering. She pushed herself up, ignoring the stinging pain in her knees.

For one more second. Just as Chen was about to say something, a team of mall emergency responders in bright vests rushed down the corridor, pushing a first-aid cart. The crowd parted as they swarmed around Nerie, immediately kneeling to inspect her scrapes, bleeding knees and offering her a bottle of water.

Gabriel stopped at the end of the corridor, waiting for the glass elevator to arrive. He glanced casually, his dark eyes sweeping over the crowd. For a fraction of a second, his gaze brushed past Chen and landed directly on Neri.

Watching Neri at her back, a curly blonde hair was disheveled, her simple dress was rumpled. Gabriel frowned slightly, a strange and fleeting sense of familiarity washing over him, he remembered something on that hair color, the shape of her body. But the elevator doors chimed and slid open.

"Chen, let's go," Gabriel called out.

Chen gave Nerie one last glance before turning on his heel to join his boss.

Neri turned and she watched the elevator doors close, sealing Gabriel away. While she stood alone in the crowded luxury mall, her hands curled into fists, ready to wage a war on land to save her kingdom in the sea.

Seeing the mall’s security and medical team handling the situation, Chen dismissed his suspicion. A clumsy tourist was not his concern. He turned around, stepping into the glass elevator just before the doors slid shut. Gabriel stands silently inside, already looking at a tablet displaying real-time schematics of the South China Sea drilling site, completely oblivious to the girl who had just changed his life forever.

Meanwhile, Nerie was wheeled into the mall’s private clinic. The room smelled heavily of rubbing alcohol and white sage.

"Just sit tight, young lady. Those cuts look deep, I’m going to get some antiseptic and bandages," the clinic doctor said, turning his back to rummage through a metal supply cabinet.

But Nerie couldn't sit tight. The phantom screams of her dying kingdom were still ringing in her ears. She looked down at her bleeding knees, closing her eyes. She focused the latent energy hidden within her human form, drawing upon her natural mermaid biology

A microscopic sheen of moisture drawn from the air gathered over her skin. Underneath the thin layer of water, her cells rapidly regenerated. Within seconds, the bleeding stopped, and the raw flesh knit back together, leaving behind flawless, unblemished skin.

Before the doctor could even turn around with the first-aid kit, Nerie already slipped out from the examination chair. She quietly opened the clinic’s back door and vanished into the service hallway.

She followed her nose, tracking the fading trail of raw electricity and deep ocean water. The scent led her down a labyrinth of hallways, past a security checkpoint where she briefly used a subtle, low-frequency siren hum in her voice to daze the guards, making them look away as she slipped through the exit doors.

Finally, she burst through the heavy glass doors of the mall's main lobby, stepping into the humid, chaotic air of the Chinese mega-city. The scent was incredibly strong here, but it was dissipating fast into the smog. Right in front of her, two identical, sleek black Mercedes-Benz sedans with heavily tinted windows rolled smoothly past the driveway, their engines purring like apex predators.

Neri stood on the curb, her breath shallow as she watched the luxury vehicles merge into the heavy city traffic. She didn't know which one to follow. She had no idea that inside the second vehicle, Gabriel was sitting silently in the backseat, his cold gaze fixed on the digital screen in his hands, completely unaware that the sea he was trying to destroy was standing right under the city lights, watching him drive away.

As the black Mercedes accelerated into the bustling Shanghai traffic, an inexplicable urge gripped Gabriel. He lifted his gaze from the tablet, his dark eyes shifting toward the side window. Through the dark glass, the city passed by in a blur of neon and concrete. But then, time seemed to slow down.

Standing perfectly still on the curb was the girl from the mall. Her curly blonde hair caught the wind, framing a face filled with a terrifyingly beautiful intensity.

What made Gabriel freeze, however, was her posture. She was standing there, steady, and completely unbothered. He distinctly remembered Chen mentioning a blonde girl that had been bleeding and injured just minutes prior. Yet there she was, completely unharmed, her piercing eyes staring directly at the passing traffic, with bruises on his arms and knees.

Gabriel watched her in the distance until the car rounded a corner.

But a faint line creased his head. Who was she?

THREE DAYS LATER

The heavy rain of the metropolis washed over the neon-lit streets. Nerie stood under the awning of a bus stop, her eyes fixed on a massive, glossy corporate poster plastered across the glass billboard. It bore the emblem of Vance Maritime Enterprises, Gabriel’s global conglomerate. The poster advertised their cutting-edge deep-sea research initiatives, complete with the address of their towering 35-story headquarters in the heart of the business district.

Nerie memorized the address. She knew she couldn't just walk into the executive suites dressed in a simple dress. She needed access to every floor, every office, and every trash bin where secrets might be discarded.

She needed to be a janitor.

An hour later, Nerie stood inside the sleek, sterile human resources office on the lower levels of the Vance tower. The HR manager, a stressed and deeply impatient woman named Ms. Zhao, didn't even look up from her computer screen as Nerie sat down across from her.

"We have dozens of applicants for the nighttime maintenance crew, and your resume is completely blank," Ms. Zhao said, in dismissive voices.

"No background check, no previous references in China. I'm afraid we can't.."

"Look at me, please," Nerie interrupted softly.

Ms. Zhao blinked, startled by the melodic, fluid quality of the girl’s voice. She slowly lifted her head.

Nerie leaned forward. Her ocean-bright eyes locked onto the manager's. She opened her mouth slightly, letting out a faint, rhythmic vibration... a subtle, low-frequency siren hum that was completely imperceptible to human ears, but instantly bypassed the logical centers of the brain.

The air in the room suddenly felt heavy, smelling faintly of a crisp sea breeze. Ms. Zhao’s pupils dilated. Her tense shoulders slumped, and a glazed, serene expression washed over her face.

"You want to hire me," Nerie whispered, her voice laced with the compelling magic of the deep sea.

"I am the perfect choice. You will give me the master keycard for the executive floors."

Like a puppet on a string, Ms. Zhao nodded slowly.

"You are... the perfect choice. I will print your contract immediately. Welcome to Vance Maritime."

Ten minutes later, Nerie walked out of the office wearing a crisp blue janitorial uniform, a heavy ring of keys and a high-clearance access card clipped to her belt. She held a mop in her hand, and her eyes looking upward toward the highest floors where Gabriel's office lay.

"I'm coming to you. Gabriel."