CHAPTER FIVE
My future was dangling before me and I had to make a choice. Marriage. I’d take it. Not just take it—seize it. A natural fucking progression in the order of things. Heirs. Bloodlines. Power passed through generations.
Did I find the ancient dance of dynasties archaic? Absolutely.
Did I still crave it with every cell in my body? Yes.
Was that hypocritical? People could call it whatever the fuck they wanted. I’d build my empire and watch it outlive me, and I wouldn’t apologize for a second of it. Who I chose to be my partner; the future matriarch of the Kostas and mother of my children was crucial.
My parents had reached a point where they were ready to handpick my bride and resurrect the old customs, the kind where a family’s elders would stand outside the bedroom door just to make sure an “heir” was conceived.
My brother hadn’t been spared the threat either.
Dominion tradition didn’t discriminate between heirs and spares—though are situation was the reverse as he wanted no parts of being at the mantle.
He was living the life as my right hand, which made our family nag me to get married twice as much as they did him.
The union wasn’t meant to soothe a man’s loneliness, only to fortify his empire, that was the way it had always been, and I had no illusions that I’d be the exception, though my goneis believed otherwise.
Thus, the Darzi arrangement served dual purposes.
Aligning with that short, twisted sonofabitch would keep my family’s ports safe, at least for now, and if I played it right, would also give me the leverage to cut him off at the knees later and take over his territory too.
After officially meeting his daughter, I knew there was far more to be gained than that.
Cassian’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Planning to enlighten us about your meeting?”
He leaned against the small drink station in the far corner of my office. Across from me, Derrick sprawled in one of the leather chairs, his posture a deliberate rebellion his mother would have corrected with a single glance.
“It was productive,” I said.
A laugh escaped Derrick as his dark gaze found mine. “Christ, Alaric. Sounds like you reviewed her quarterly performance instead of taking her to dinner.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
Cassian straightened. “Well, what was it like then?”
I paused, choosing my words. “She defied expectations.”
“Mmm,” Derrick’s lips curved knowingly. “Beautiful women tend to.”
“She’s more than that,” I replied. “Her father’s done a number on her, but she has the potential to be everything I’ve been looking for.”
Derrick chuckled. “Ah, my friend. You’ve got a soft spot already.”
“Soft isn’t the word either.”
He smirked. “Then what is?”
“Curious.”
Truthfully, that wasn’t all I was. I kept seeing her sitting across from me at that table, posture perfect, voice even, eyes that said far more than her words ever could.
Cassian spoke again, tone lighter. “You sound like a man who’s already made up his mind.”
“Hardly.” I reached for my neglected drink. “I’m curious. Not foolish.”
“After Danielle, you deserve to be,” Derrick agreed.
My brother raised his hand in protest. “We’ve established a moratorium on that name in this house.”
“Danielle and I had an understanding.”
“Sure,” Derrick droned. “Until she didn’t understand her place anymore.”
I smiled faintly. “That’s one way to put it.”
Danielle had been a walking business plan in six-inch heels.
She'd known which cards to play and when, but our strategies never aligned.
We functioned better as allies than as a merged corporation.
I needed someone who saw the empire as ours, not hers, and played her role accordingly—and she needed someone who'd let her live the lifestyle without doing any of the work.
Selene wasn’t like that. She wasn’t playing the game at all but had all the skills to overtake it in the area I would need my wife to.
Cassian's voice cut through my thoughts once more. "When are you seeing her again?"
"Tonight. Dinner," I revealed, keeping my tone neutral.
"That's... quick," Derrick observed, eyebrows raised.
I met his gaze steadily. "I recognize an opportunity when I see one."
My brother studied me, all traces of amusement gone. "What's your endgame here, Alaric?"
My attention drifted to the window where afternoon light fractured. "Something authentic."
The silence stretched between us, heavy with unspoken understanding.
Derrick broke it with a low chuckle. "Damn. Poor woman doesn't know what's coming."
“She won’t see it coming because there’s nothing to see. I’m not planning an ambush,” I countered.
Cassian shot me a skeptical look, the kind that had irritated me since childhood. “You’re always planning something. It’s what makes you... you.”
My brother wasn’t wrong. Strategy was embedded in my DNA, each interaction a move on a board only I could fully see.
But with Selene, the game already felt different.
There was something about her that threaded itself under the skin.
Not the way Danielle once had—with beauty and theatrics and a hunger for the stage lights—but with the opposite.
Not to say Selene wasn’t fucking gorgeous.
A man blind and deaf would be able to tell you that.
Her hair was a deep, cool brown that caught light like polished chestnut, falling in a silken cascade down her back. Her skin held the kind of warmth you couldn’t fake, sun-kissed with that faint gold undertone that made her look perpetually bathed in late afternoon light.
Her eyes—not just brown, but a complex topography of umber and sienna with flecks of copper near the pupils, were the kind that pulled you in slowly, revealing more the longer you stared.
Not glassy or pleading like most women who’d tried to capture my attention; hers were observant, patient, too old for her age—28 to my 34.
When they met mine across the white tablecloth, it felt less like being admired and more like being measured for a coffin.
Her frame carried the quiet athleticism of someone who’d been trained to control every movement—posture straight as a blade, shoulders set with deliberate poise, every motion elegant from the precise way she walked to the way she sat with her ankles crossed, never taking up too much space but somehow owning all of it, like a queen who needed no crown.
And her mouth—subtle pink lips with a pronounced Cupid’s bow that quirked almost imperceptibly at the corners when she spoke—was more distracting than it should be, drawing my attention with each word.
She was smaller than me in a sculpted rather than delicate way. When she’d allowed me to guide her from the building I’d noticed the line of her back, and the way her dress curved over the soft arch of her hips, but there was no vanity in how she moved.
Her requests lingered in my mind long after her perfume had faded from the air. Not diamonds, not status— she’d asked for open sky and her sister’s face. I’d already dispatched my cousin Helena to locate Amara before I’d even loosened my tie that night.
The calculation behind her quiet words had caught me unprepared.
It was the way her mind worked. The thought before every answer as if she were dismantling a bomb rather than having dinner conversation.
Beauty becomes wallpaper when you’ve seen enough of it, but that kind of intellect—razor-edged and veiled behind perfect composure—that’s the kind of weapon you either wield or die by.
So when Cassian pressed for details, I swallowed the truth whole. Men in my position guarded their intentions about women like her with the same vigilance we protected our territories, leaving no avenue for retreat.
Tonight’s dinner would merely confirm what I already knew. This transcended simple intrigue. I’ d discovered something exquisite in the rough, something irreplaceable. And history had proven that anything of value I coveted inevitably bore my mark.
When I saw her again, the alliance would be a footnote.
I needed to witness firsthand what kind of woman emerged from the shadow of a monster like her father, needed to know if she recognized the power forged in that crucible of cruelty had already tempered her into a woman capable of standing beside me.