The city outside was the same as it had always been—loud, restless, never stopping. A constant machine of ambition and power, where the strong took what they wanted and the weak were left to drown. It was a city of war, of calculated destruction, of men who knew how to claw their way to the top and burn everything that stood in their way. Kian Vale had shaped himself to be one of those men. No, he had become the one they feared, the one they whispered about, the one whose name carried weight long before he ever walked into a room. There was no space for weakness. No space for hesitation.
And yet—Adrian had always been his exception.