Hold Me in the Shadows

Aria is nothing but a pawn in her family's empire—a tool for marriage, controlled by her ruthless brother Victor. Even her dreams of building an AI empire are crushed under his heel. Until one stormy night, Damon crashes through her balcony window. He's everything Victor despises: the school's rebellious quarterback, a stray dog from the wrong side of town. Aria should push him away. Instead, she grabs his collar and kisses him. What starts as a fake-dating contract spirals into something far more dangerous. In public, they play the perfect couple to mock Victor. In secret, Aria uses dirty money to resurrect her frozen AI project, while Damon takes hit after hit on the field—his body a shield against her family's violence. What was meant to be a transaction turns into a battlefield of blood and scars. Then she finds it: a yellowed photo tucked inside his playbook, with her face from ten years ago. On the back, scrawled in black ink: "My salvation. My prey." The "accident" that brought him into her life wasn't an accident at all. He'd been watching her for a decade. She thought she was using a stray dog as a weapon. He'd already given her his life years ago. Lies pile into webs. Flesh and blood become stepping stones. Together, these two apex predators tear down a billion-dollar empire and rise from the ruins to build a kingdom of their own—crowning each other in a ceremony written in fire and ink.