He saw her for the first time under the golden lights of Bangkok’s most exclusive gala—a woman in ivory, her eyes holding the kind of sorrow that whispered of loss too deep for words.

Everyone else faded.

The music. The laughter. The glittering gowns and polished suits. All of it dissolved into nothing the second his gaze found hers. Still. Quiet. Alone.

Meera.

He didn’t know her name then, but he felt her like a bullet to the chest.

She wasn’t the kind of woman men like him were supposed to want—soft, broken, haunted. But something about that silence around her, the way she kept herself untouched by the chaos of the world, made something violent stir inside him.

Not desire.

Possession.

She wasn’t meant to be here. She wasn’t meant to exist in his world. But she did.

And from that moment, she belonged to him—even if she didn’t know it yet.

He watched her smile politely at strangers, her eyes never really lighting up. He saw how she gently avoided conversations, how her fingers clutched the edge of her juice glass as if it anchored her to the room. He memorized every detail—her trembling breath, the way her throat moved when she swallowed, the sadness she tried so hard to hide behind that graceful composure.

That night, he didn’t approach her. Not because he didn’t want to.

But because he wanted too much.

He wasn’t the kind of man who asked. He took. And the moment he touched her, he knew there would be no turning back. Not for her. And definitely not for him.

He would learn everything about her.

He would invade every space she tried to keep sacred.

And he would make her his—even if it meant breaking her world apart, just to rebuild it with his name etched into every breath she took.

She came to Thailand to escape her past.

But what she found was a man who would burn the world down just to be the one she looked at.

And Kiaan Singhania wasn’t afraid of fire.

He was the fire.