Chapter One – Midnight:Vienna

The hum of the engine was a low, comforting growl beneath him as he leaned into the curve of the highway, the wind a sleek whisper in his ears. Layla, his CBR650R, responded like a living thing—fluid, precise, alive. The city lights of Vienna glittered behind him, but he wasn’t slowing down. Not yet. Not until the tension bled out of his shoulders.
At nineteen, he shouldn’t have been this weary. But the markets never slept. His mind was always ticking—charts, patterns, momentum, liquidity. Yet, tonight wasn’t about numbers. It was about her.
He thought about the way her eyes—hazel and haunting—looked at him when she didn’t know he was watching. The way her fingers curled into his shirt in her sleep. The way she believed in him with a faith that sometimes scared him.
They’d met when he was seventeen and just beginning to taste the edge of real money, the kind that came not from luck but from obsession. She was the only thing that ever stopped him in his tracks.
Now, two years later, he was building an empire. The kind his competitors tried to replicate but never understood. His brother handled logistics. He was the face, the mind, the will. The vision.
He parked Layla beneath the suite balcony of the Sacher Hotel, the purr of the bike echoing off cobblestones. When he entered the room, she was curled on the window seat, watching the Danube lights flicker across the water.
“You didn’t text,” she said softly without turning.
“I needed to ride.”
She turned to him, her face radiant despite the hour. “Bad day?”
“No. Just a heavy one.”
She crossed the room in three silent steps and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his chest. He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
“I missed you,” she said.
“I missed you more.”
He kissed her then—slow, unhurried, like there was nothing else in the world. Because when she was in his arms, there really wasn’t.
—
Her body melted into his as his hands slid up her back, fingers finding bare skin under her oversized shirt—his shirt. He lifted her effortlessly, carrying her to the bed like she weighed nothing. Her breath caught as he laid her down, eyes never leaving hers.
“You’re the only thing that makes sense in this world,” he whispered, his voice low, roughened with restraint.
Her response was a trembling whisper. “Then take me there.”
His lips traced a path down her collarbone, lingering where her pulse thudded beneath warm skin. Her fingers tangled in his hair as his mouth explored her like a map he already knew but wanted to memorize anew each time.
There was nothing rushed. He worshipped her, adored every inch of her as if it were the last night they’d ever have. Her moans were soft, breathy, the kind that curled into a man’s soul and lit a fire he never wanted to put out.
When he finally joined her, it wasn’t just about desire. It was about connection. Fusion. Completion. She arched to meet him, her nails digging into his back, grounding herself in the reality of what they were.
And in the quiet that followed, wrapped in sheets and each other, she whispered, “Promise me it’ll always feel like this.”
He kissed her temple and whispered, “No. It’ll feel better.”
The city moved on outside their window, but inside, time obeyed only them.
—
She sat between his legs in the marble bathtub, their bodies half-submerged beneath the lavender-scented water. His arms circled her from behind, and his chin rested on her shoulder.
“You’re quiet,” she murmured.
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“Salzburg. The cabin in the hills. Us.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “You’re planning again.”
“I’m always planning. That’s how I stay ahead.” He kissed the back of her neck, slow and thoughtful. “But this one’s different. I want it to be just us. No screens. No numbers. Just air, mountains, and your laugh in the morning.”
She turned her head to look at him. “You remember that time at Imlauer Sky, when it snowed in May?”
He nodded. “You looked like you belonged in that snowfall. Like a dream I wasn’t ready to wake up from.”
She reached back and touched his cheek. “You scare me sometimes. With how much you feel.”
“I don’t feel for many things.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “But you… you rewrote the code.”
They stayed like that, until the water cooled, and the silence deepened with meaning. A silence that knew what came next.
And far beyond the walls of their hotel, the world spun on. But for them, time folded in, pulling tighter and warmer around a love too rare to name.