THE BILLIONAIRE'S FORBIDDEN OBSESSION

FINDING GABRIEL

The polished marble floor of the luxury mall in Shanghai gleamed like frozen water under the towering glass atrium.

Gabriel stepped out of the boutique, the weight of a newly purchased, limited-edition timepiece heavy on his left wrist. He adjusted his tailored cuff with a practiced, indifferent flick of his fingers. He walked with the effortless authority of a man who owned the ground he walked on, completely unbothered by the towering metropolis buzzing around him.

Flanking him were his two personal bodyguards, broad-shouldered and sharp-eyed in their dark suits, silently cutting a path through the affluent crowd.

Behind them, the glass doors of a high-end storefront glided open.

Neri stepped into the wide corridor, blending into the crowd yet entirely distinct from it. She was alone. Her long, curly blonde hair cascaded around her shoulders like sunlit waves, a stark contrast to the sharp lines and monochromatic luxury of the Chinese mega-mall. She wore a simple, unpretentious dress and basic flat shoes.

Every step she took was careful, and balanced the exhausting physical price of her grueling training to walk on land as a real human.

But suddenly, Neri froze in her tracks. She tilted her face upward, her eyes fluttering shut as she took a deep, steady breath. The air around her was a suffocating mix of expensive synthetic perfumes, ozone from the air conditioning, and brand-new leather. But right through the center of that artificial haze, a familiar scent cut through. It was a sharp, intoxicating note of deep ocean water and raw electricity.

Gabriel.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, a wild, aquatic rhythm.

"He's here..." she whispered to herself, her voice a breathless hum.

He is so close. I can feel him. Neri snapped her eyes open, her gaze cutting through the sea of moving shoppers. Her ocean-bright eyes locked onto a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette moving away from her.

The two men in black suits walked just half a step behind him, shielding him from the world.

It was him.

Ignoring the ache in her unaccustomed feet, Neri pressed forward. She pushed past the glittering shop windows, her eyes anchored entirely on his retreating back, terrified that the bustling metropolis would swallow him whole before she could reach him.

The distance between them was closing, but the marble floor was unforgiving. Neri’s newly formed muscles, trained to glide through deep ocean currents rather than conquer solid ground, began to betray her. Her ankles wobbled inside the unfamiliar flat shoes. She pressed forward anyway, her eyes locked entirely on Gabriel’s broad shoulders.Then, her foot caught on an uneven seam in the polished stone.

With a sharp gasp, Neri stumbled. Gravity pulled her down violently, and she collapsed onto the hard marble.

Pain shot up her knees, a burning sensation completely foreign to a creature of the sea. The impact forced a low cry from her lips, drawing a curious stares from the wealthy shoppers passing by.

The sudden commotion behind them did not go unnoticed. One of Gabriel’s bodyguards, a sharp-eyed security detail named Chen, instantly caught the sound. His hand instinctively moved toward his jacket as he spun around. His eyes scanned the crowd and immediately locked onto the blonde woman on the floor. Even from a distance, something about her struck him as unusual, she looked entirely out of place, desperate, and her eyes were fixed directly on Gabriel.

Chen tapped his earpiece, his posture tightening into a defensive stance.

"Sir, we may have a situation behind us," Chen muttered, stepping backward to shield his boss. But Gabriel didn't look back.

Just as Chen spoke, the heavy vibration of Gabriel's phone buzzed against his chest. He pulled it out, intending to silence it, but the name flashing on the encrypted screen made him freeze. His indifferent expression vanished, replaced by a sudden, intense gravity.

It was a call he could not afford to ignore.

Raising a hand to halt his bodyguards, Gabriel answered the phone, his voice dropping to a sharp, commanding whisper as he kept walking forward.

"Speak to me. Is the shipment secure?"

Behind him, Neri pushed herself up on trembling hands, her heart shattering as she watched Gabriel’s distance grow, completely unaware that the girl who saved him, was reaching out for him...

Gabriel pressed the phone tight against his ear, his long strides taking him further down the corridor. He completely ignored Chen’s warning about the commotion behind them.

The voice on the other end of the line was frantic, distorted by the static of a secure satellite connection.

"Sir, the deep-sea drilling project in the South China Sea just breached the trench ahead of schedule," his lead researcher whispered, panic dripping from every word he hears.

"We didn't just hit oil. The sonic drills ruptured an underground cavern. Sir... the sonar grids are picking up massive biological readings. There are certain things that moving down there!"

Gabriel’s grip tightened on his phone. His newly purchased watch caught the harsh mall lighting, ticking away the seconds of a crisis he had secretly engineered. He had funded this illegal, ultra-deep excavation for months, hunting for a mythical, highly concentrated energy source whispered about in ancient maritime legends, the lifeblood of a hidden ocean civilization.

"Have the automated containment nets been deployed?" Gabriel demanded, in his cold voices.

"Yes, but they are tearing through them! Whatever is living down there is fighting back. If the public finds out we've attacked an undiscovered eco-system, the company is ruined. We need to authorize the lethal neural-pulse weapons to wipe out the remaining specimens before they breach the surface." the researcher said.

"Authorize it. Seal the trench. Leave no trace of their existence." Gabriel commanded without a shred of hesitation.

Only a few yards behind him, Neri pushed herself up onto her scraped, bleeding knees. After Gabriel spoke those words, a sudden blinding agony flared inside her mind. It wasn't the pain of her bruised human flesh, it was a psychic shockwave, a collective scream of terror echoing from her deep-sea home. Her sisters, her elders, and her entire kingdom were under attack. She gasped, clutching her head as tears spilled down her cheeks. The faint scent of the ocean and electricity radiating from Gabriel suddenly turned dark and terrifying.

The man she was desperately searching for, was actually the executioner of her world.

The psychic scream of her people vibrated through Neri’s skull, leaving a high-pitched ring in her ears. She collapsed forward again, her hands pressing hard against the cold polished mall floor. Through the haze of pain, she forced her eyes open. Her vision locked onto Gabriel’s retreating form. He was slipping his phone back into his coat pocket, his posture completely relaxed, entirely unmoved by the g******e he had just ordered.

Chen, the eagle-eyed bodyguard, stepped into her line of sight, blocking her view of Gabriel.

"Miss? Are you alright?" Chen’s voice was professional, but his hand remained near his jacket, his eyes darting to her bleeding knees and then to her wild, grief-stricken expression.

He took a step closer, sensing that her distress wasn't just from a simple fall. "Do you need medical assistance?"

Neri didn't answer him. Her mind was racing, adapting to a horrific new reality. The human world was no longer a wonderland of lights, clothes, and strange food. It was a fortress harboring a monster. Her grueling transformation, the agonizing pain of growing legs, and her mission to find Gabriel... it wasn't about love or curiosity anymore. It was about survival.

"Hey Miss, are you totally fine?"