Burning Love

To save the girl he had been mentoring, the man I loved handed me over to my worst enemy. “If you just spend one night with Sebastian, Ruby will be saved.” Everyone in New York knew Sebastian hated my guts. During the years I was studying abroad, he turned the entire city upside down just to find me. Yet Hugo still pushed me directly into his territory. “Is your dignity really more important than her life?” Inside the dark, sprawling mansion. Sebastian lit a cigarette, the ember glowing faintly in the pitch black room. “You finally came back to me.” But. Who was the hunter, and who was the prey. Who could really tell. 1 Hugo was the boy I grew up with. After my mother passed away, Hugo was the one who paid for my tuition abroad. He pulled me out of my darkest depression and walked beside me every step of the way until we reached where we are today. We founded a company together. We fought for our careers together. He was the only light in my life, and falling in love with him felt like the most natural thing in the world. Even though we never had an official proposal or a public announcement, everyone in our circle knew we were together. He promised me that the second our company went public, he would put a ring on my finger. He would tell the whole world that I was the love of his life. He used to hold my hands and make promises to me. “Shelly, we are the closest people in the world to each other.” “We can never abandon each other.” But in the end, he was the first one to let go. It was almost laughable. When I found out Ruby had made a catastrophic mistake at work, my first instinct was to find Hugo. I wanted to discuss how we could minimize the fallout for the company and figure out a way to give Ruby a second chance. Instead, I stood frozen outside his office door, listening to him use his softest, most gentle tone to comfort her. “This is not your fault.” “You just graduated. Shelly should never have dumped so much responsibility on you. At the end of the day, this is her management error.” “Don’t be scared. No matter how angry she gets, I will protect you.” A massive wave of agony hit me like a sledgehammer. In that split second, my entire reality shattered. I shoved the door open and stared at the two of them standing intimately close together. “Hugo, what the hell is this?” 2 Ruby, whose face was stained with beautiful, delicate tears, had been leaning against Hugo’s chest. My sudden entrance made her tremble like a frightened bird. Hugo instinctively reached out to soothe her, gently rubbing her shoulder. The sight of his hand on her burned my eyes. I fought desperately to hold back my tears, but my vision still blurred. Ruby was a junior from my high school. Ever since she joined our university, she had followed me around like a shadow, always calling me her beloved senior. Back then, people used to whisper that I was just a brainless, arrogant rich kid who only knew how to throw tantrums and spend money. Ruby was the only one who stood up and defended me. She came from a completely average family but worked incredibly hard. Remembering our old friendship, I hired her the second she graduated. To help her build her career quickly, I personally guided her through several of our biggest accounts. Hugo used to joke about it. “Your little protege is a shark. Even our most difficult clients absolutely adore her.” At the time, I thought Hugo was just being a little cynical. If the clients loved her, it just meant her professional skills were solid. I never expected her to be so skilled that she would make Hugo fall for her too. But this time, the ever clever Ruby had leaked highly classified company documents, completely enraging our biggest investor. I forced my emotions down. I forced myself to look away from the sickening pity on Hugo’s face. “Ruby, leaking a project proposal is a massive breach. The fallout is severe.” “We are all adults here. You cannot run away from the consequences of your actions.” “I will go with you to apologize to the investors.” Ruby stood up nervously. She looked at Hugo, then looked at me. “Shelly… the representative from Apex Capital said they will only speak to you…” Apex Capital had invested in our startup two years ago. Back then, we were just getting off the ground. Every single investment firm in the city laughed us out of their offices. To our absolute shock, the biggest venture capital firm in the country reached out to us directly, injecting a massive amount of funding into our accounts. Because of that money, our company skyrocketed in just two years. But I could not fathom how Hugo could possibly believe that Ruby’s catastrophic failure should fall on my shoulders. I stared at his face, suddenly realizing how incredibly foreign this man looked to me. Was he always this shameless? “Take the fall for me? Do you think I own this company by myself?” Hugo remained completely indifferent to my anger. “You were the one who secured the Apex investment. It is naturally your responsibility to handle them.” Ruby dropped to her knees right in front of me, shaking violently, looking up at me like a pathetic, abandoned puppy. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Shelly, I swear I didn’t mean to do it. Please, just save me this one time…” Hugo grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly to her feet, glaring at me with pure frustration. “Shelly! Ruby offended the investors while working on your project! You should be the one going there to beg for forgiveness!” “You are the one who should be on your knees.” “Do you really not know? The man behind Apex Capital is Sebastian. He specifically demanded that you go see him.” Hugo’s words hit me so hard the room began to spin. Sebastian? The sole heir to the most powerful family in New York. The untouchable prince of the city. But Hugo wasn’t finished. He had something far more cruel waiting for me. “Sebastian said that if you just spend one night with him, he will let the company off the hook.” The last thread of my sanity snapped. It felt like my heart had been ripped in half and thrown bleeding onto the floor. “Hugo, what exactly am I to you?” Hugo furrowed his brows, looking at me like I was an unreasonable child throwing a tantrum. “It is literally just one night.” Did he really not understand what one night meant? No. He was just playing stupid because he was a coward trying to escape reality. When I didn’t speak, Hugo finally lost his temper. “Is your pride really worth more than Ruby’s entire future?” “If you don’t fix this, Ruby will be blacklisted. She will never be able to work in this city again!” I was entirely sick of his voice. I grabbed the door handle and dropped my words like ice. “Then you can both go straight to hell.” 3 I severely underestimated how utterly disgusting Ruby could be. When I refused to go see Sebastian, she resorted to playing dirty. When I finally opened my eyes, I was lying on a plush sofa in a completely unfamiliar mansion. My head was splitting open. My entire body felt weak and numb. The last memory I had was Ruby’s twisted face and the ropes in her hands. I pushed myself up from the leather cushions, clutching my pounding head, looking completely disheveled. The sound of a heavy door unlocking echoed through the room. A shadow I had not seen in years stepped into the entryway. Sebastian walked in wearing a dark tailored suit. He brought the cold night air in with him. He barely even glanced in my direction. He shrugged off his heavy wool trench coat and handed it to a man standing behind him. The man took the coat and immediately melted back into the shadows of the hallway, vanishing completely. Highly trained. Sebastian slowly unbuckled his luxury watch. The rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt revealed faint, intricate tattoos wrapping around his forearms. I couldn’t make out the design. As soon as he noticed me staring, he casually rolled his sleeves down, hiding the ink. He looked entirely uninterested in acknowledging my existence. The mansion fell into a suffocating, dead silence. I knew exactly how pathetic I looked right now. Sweat was dripping down my neck. My hair was a tangled mess. The collar of my silk blouse had been violently ripped open. I had no idea how Ruby managed to get me delivered here. I knew Sebastian hated me. After all, I was the reason his life fell apart back then. When I fled New York, Sebastian put a terrifying bounty on my head. He told the underground that whoever found me could name their price. His hatred for me was probably far deeper and far more toxic than I could ever imagine. But right now, if I wanted to survive. I had to play nice. An unnatural, scorching heat began rolling through my veins, wave after wave, melting my rational thoughts away. It only took a second for me to realize exactly what Ruby had done to me. She was utterly ruthless. I dug my nails fiercely into my own thigh, using the sharp pain to force myself awake. I stood up from the sofa and walked slowly toward Sebastian. The man actually froze. His thin lips pressed into a hard line before his emotionless voice finally broke the silence. “What are you doing…” Before he could finish his sentence, I shut him up. I stood on my toes and pressed my lips directly against the corner of his mouth. His scent completely enveloped me. There was no alcohol on his breath. He smelled incredible, far better than I remembered. I could see his Adam’s apple bob slightly, but he did not speak. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted…” My hot breath brushed against his skin. It seemed to burn right through his dark eyes, igniting a dangerous, heavy lust. I thought he would pull me into his arms, but instead, he let out a dark, mocking laugh. “Shelly, what gives you the confidence to think I would ever take you back?” The drug was turning my brain to absolute mush. Like a person dying of thirst in the desert, I completely abandoned my pride, desperately seeking anything cool to the touch. I pressed my burning cheek against his jaw. “I promise I’ll be a good girl this time, Oliver…” That name triggered something violent inside him. His freezing fingers suddenly grabbed my jaw in a bruising grip. “You really have a death wish, don’t you.” My arms draped weakly over his broad shoulders. My eyes were completely glazed over. “If you really don’t want me, then push me away.” Those words worked like magic. A second later, he crashed his lips into mine, devouring me completely. 4 I had no idea how much time passed. My consciousness had completely fractured. I could not tell if I was living in the real world or trapped in a fever dream. My body felt like it was sinking into a bed of warm, heavy feathers. I felt entirely weightless. Somewhere in the background, a phone began to ring, only to be instantly silenced by a heavy hand. “She is with me.” “Let them deal with the fallout themselves.” “Keep the company intact. I still have a use for it.” The mattress dipped beside me. A scorching heat enveloped my body. A soft touch pressed against my forehead, sounding somewhere between a sigh and a desperate whisper. “You finally came back to me.” 5 I couldn’t stop dreaming. My head was incredibly heavy as I plummeted into an endless, bottomless nightmare. I saw myself sitting in my childhood living room. My mother was telling me that she and my father had gone to an orphanage and adopted an older brother for me. Standing right behind her was a twelve year old boy. Back then, he was introduced to me as Oliver. Silent and cold. That was my very first impression of him. Rumor had it he was found wandering the streets. He had lost all of his memories. He didn’t know his real name, and he had no idea where his home was. After spending six months in the orphanage, my mother brought him home. I had been a sickly child since the day I was born. When I turned ten, some spiritual advisor told my parents that they needed to adopt a perfectly healthy child to absorb my bad luck and keep me safe. And just like that, there was a stranger living in my house. My mother told me my new brother would play with me and keep me company. But I absolutely despised him. I hated how smart he was. I hated how perfect he was. I hated how mature he acted. And most of all, I hated how he completely ignored me every time I tried to bully him. “Shelly, you need to play nice with your brother.” My mother said those exact words to me constantly. “No! Now that he’s here, you guys are going to stop loving me!” I screamed at her and locked myself in my bedroom. But secretly, I sat on my bed waiting for them to come upstairs and comfort me. It was the only way I could prove they still loved me. I needed them to indulge my tantrums. At first, my parents would come upstairs and coax me out. But as time went on, they realized I was just insecure and completely unwilling to accept Oliver. So eventually, the person sent to comfort me changed. My parents thought sending Oliver to my room would help us bond. They had no idea that every time Oliver walked into my bedroom, he would simply sit in the corner chair and read a book. He completely ignored my existence. He wasn’t afraid of me complaining to my parents at all. I only dared to throw tantrums at my parents because I knew they cared about me. But when I was trapped in a room alone with Oliver, I couldn’t even raise my voice. He carried a natural, suffocating aura of authority that terrified me. But when I was sixteen, after another massive fight with my mother, I ran to my room and finally snapped. His invasion of my personal space had become entirely too aggressive. “Hey! What gives you the right to just sit in my room?! Get out!” I screamed at him, my face still wet with angry tears. Oliver slowly lifted his eyes from his book. He gave me a cold, dead stare. He closed the book and walked directly toward me. His overwhelming presence made me instantly regret my outburst. I cowardly shrank back against my pillows. He leaned down over my bed, resting his hands on his knees, bringing his face dangerously close to mine. His cool breath brushed across my skin. His freezing finger reached out and tapped a teardrop resting on my cheek. “Dirty little kitten.” 6 When I woke up, I was completely alone in the massive bed. The balcony doors were cracked open. The sea breeze caught the sheer curtains, revealing a tall silhouette standing outside. I could hear fragments of a low, aggressive conversation. He was on the phone. “You all know damn well I am the one running this family now.” “No one on this earth can stop me from getting what I want.” “If you can’t even handle a mess this simple, you have absolutely no reason to stay in my company.” The dark, menacing voice suddenly stopped. The man on the balcony had noticed me trying to silently sneak out of the bedroom. Sebastian hung up the phone instantly and walked toward me. I backed away in panic, but he cornered me against the wall. His eyes dragged slowly down my body. A dark possessiveness flashed in his gaze. He grabbed my wrist violently and yanked me flush against his chest. “Where do you think you’re going?” “Are you trying to abandon me again?” “Shelly, do you honestly believe I will ever let you walk away from me again?” Faced with his sudden, erratic explosion of emotion, I tried desperately to break his grip, feeling entirely helpless. “You have to at least let me go wash my face!” Sebastian’s brow furrowed even deeper. His deep, intense eyes locked onto my face, as if he was trying to dissect my soul to see if I was lying to him again. After all, the old me used to lie to him constantly. And back then, he swallowed every single lie willingly, completely blinded by his obsession with me. I was currently wearing a men’s bathrobe I had found on the floor. It hung loosely off my shoulders, doing absolutely nothing to hide the violent red marks covering my collarbones. Under his aggressive, predatory stare, my face burned bright red. He finally let go of my wrist. “Do not even think about playing games with me.” He dropped the warning like a heavy stone and shoved me toward the master bathroom. “Wash up and come downstairs. Breakfast is ready.” 7 The massive, sunlit dining room was entirely silent, save for the faint clinking of silverware against porcelain. I kept my head down, focusing entirely on the food on my plate. I didn’t even need to look up to feel Sebastian’s burning, obsessive stare drilling into the side of my head. The exact second I finished a piece of food, he would smoothly and accurately place another piece of whatever I was craving directly onto my plate. It was like he could read my mind. “I’m full.” As soon as the words left my mouth, Sebastian picked up a linen napkin and naturally reached over to wipe the corner of my mouth. I turned my head sharply, dodging his hand. “I can do it myself.” But when I reached for the napkin, the man refused to let go. A freezing smile locked onto his lips. His eyes cut into me like blades, carrying a faint, terrifying undercurrent of hatred. “Weren’t you crying in my bed last night, promising you would be a good girl for me…” My face instantly caught fire again. After a few years apart, his mouth had become absolutely toxic. He always knew exactly how to humiliate me. Seeing that I had no response, Sebastian’s long, elegant fingers pressed the napkin firmly against the corner of my lips. The scorching heat of his palm bled through the fabric, burning my skin. “If you actually behave, I might consider going easy on that pathetic boyfriend of yours.” The whispered threat brushed against my ear like a lover’s sweet confession. Dark, sticky, and completely suffocating. But we were not lovers. And we could never be lovers. 8 When I was sixteen, I was brilliant, beautiful, and the center of attention. I was a little princess worshipped by everyone around me. My parents spoiled me rotten. The entire world revolved around me. They never raised their voices at me, let alone yelled at me. But one day, my elegant, rational mother turned into a complete stranger. She stormed into my bedroom, grabbed my backpack, and violently dumped everything onto the floor. Textbooks, pens, and a few light envelopes scattered across the carpet. She snatched up the envelopes. I had absolutely no idea when they were slipped into my bag. Her face twisted into a mask of pure rage as she screamed at me. “You are a child! Why are you entertaining love letters?! Why can’t you be mature and responsible like Oliver?! You spend two hours in the mirror every morning trying to seduce boys! If I ever catch you acting like a cheap tramp again, I will throw you out of this house!” Slam. My bedroom door was violently shut. The wind from the door hit my face like a physical slap. Tears instantly spilled from my eyes. A terrifying, indescribable sense of terror and injustice crushed my chest. I could not understand why my mother had suddenly turned into a monster. I cried alone in my room until the sun completely set. Normally, my mother would have knocked on my door hours ago, using her softest voice to coax me down for dinner. But that night, she never came. Instead, Oliver walked into my room carrying a dinner tray. “Go wash your face, then eat your food.” His tone was completely flat and calm. He acted as if I wasn’t sitting on my bed sobbing hysterically. He acted as if I was just quietly doing my homework. “Get out!” I screamed at him with zero hesitation. Crying for hours had completely ruined my voice. It sounded like sandpaper. The boy walked over to my desk, picked up a glass pitcher, poured a cup of warm water, and held it out to me. “Drink this. It will soothe your throat. Otherwise, you won’t be able to speak tomorrow.” Crash. I slapped the glass out of his hand. It shattered into a hundred pieces across the hardwood floor. “I don’t need your fake pity!” I glared at him with absolute venom. Ever since he moved into our house, my perfect, happy family had been slowly falling apart. “You’re the one who told on me, aren’t you?!” Who else could it be? We went to the same high school. Even though we were in different classes, he always knew exactly what I was doing, exactly who I was talking to. Sometimes I genuinely wondered if he had planted a tracking device on my clothes. “You need to focus entirely on your studies right now.” He neither confirmed nor denied my accusation. He just sat on the edge of my bed, looking down at me from above. The room was lit only by a dim floor lamp. The weak light traced the outline of his tall, lean, athletic body. He wasn’t just a genius. He was a machine. He kept the highest grades in the entire school while simultaneously breaking the scoring records for the varsity team. Compared to him, my intelligence was honestly a joke. But so what! I was the only biological daughter of this family! That alone meant I had already won! I pushed myself up on the bed, glaring at him with swollen red eyes. “Don’t get cocky! My mom only yelled at me tonight because she’s stressed! I am their only real child!” “I have never, ever considered you my brother!” Faced with my vicious insults and fury, Oliver remained just as cold and apathetic as always. “Good.” His pale eyelids lifted. His amber eyes locked onto mine, filled with an endless, dangerous darkness. “I don’t want to be your brother either.” 9 Oliver and I had a massive falling out that night. Even though I never saw him as family, hearing him actually say it out loud infuriated me. What an ungrateful bastard! My family gave him everything. I had the right to reject him, but he was obligated to be grateful to us! What gave him the right to reject me?! That was how completely unreasonable and arrogant I was at sixteen. I wanted to find a chance to tell my mother what he said, hoping she would stop caring about him so much and spend more time with me. But after that night, my mother became incredibly busy. I barely ever saw her at the house. And she grew colder and colder toward me. When I tried to act cute and seek her attention, she no longer looked at me with that gentle, loving gaze. She didn’t hug me or pinch my cheeks to make me laugh. Instead, she looked at me with pure exhaustion and impatience. “Shelly, you are almost seventeen years old. Start acting like it.” “Look at Oliver. He is the exact same age as you, but he is incredibly mature and reliable.” Not only that, her blatant favoritism toward Oliver became impossible to ignore. She was constantly checking on his health. The private chefs were ordered to cook strictly according to Oliver’s dietary preferences. Whenever the luxury brands sent their seasonal catalogs to the house, Oliver was given the books first to pick out whatever he wanted. Even our family vacations were planned entirely around what Oliver enjoyed doing. During parent teacher conferences, my mother would go to Oliver’s classroom first, and then eventually make her way to mine. “Well, he is a boy. Boys are just more reliable. Unlike Shelly. She is almost seventeen and all she cares about is partying and wasting time.” I stood holding my notebooks outside the teacher’s office, listening to my own mother say those exact words to Oliver’s homeroom teacher. He is a boy. So my mother believed that because I wasn’t a boy, I was completely useless compared to him? I squeezed the notebooks in my hands so hard the sharp cardboard edges cut into my palms, leaving deep red lines. I absolutely refused to lose to Oliver. I refused to let him steal the love that belonged exclusively to me.

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