Lashirah_Hash

> He saw her once—and that was enough.

Elena Rivers was just a waitress at a high-end gala she didn’t belong to, filling in for someone else's shift. She didn’t know her spilled glass of champagne would be the moment Damien Vale—billionaire, recluse, and dangerously obsessive—noticed her.

He never spoke to her. Not then. But he watched.

And when he wanted her closer, he made it happen.

Now, Elena is working directly under him, unaware that the life she thinks she controls is already entangled in the hands of a man who doesn't just want her—he needs her.

He’s patient. He’s powerful. And he’s been planning this from the moment she walked into his view.

OBSESSION IN SILENCE

"Elena?" The voice was impossibly familiar. Softer than memory, warmer than the world she'd come to know.

The name echoed like a life she'd almost lived. The gentle-eyed boy from university, the one who used to lend her books with handwritten notes in the margins. The one who made her laugh when she was too tired to speak. The one who once told her, half-drunk under a silver sky, "If I ever had a chance with you, I'd never let you cry alone."

She'd thought he was a dream. A gentle flicker in a storm.

But here he was in flesh and breath and sunlight.

"I... What are you doing here?" she managed.

He smiled, and it was like the world paused to watch.

"Business trip," he said. "And fate, apparently." His eyes scanned her face, and the warmth dimmed just a little. "You look... tired."

"I can tell." He hesitated. "Do you want to talk?"

They walked to a quiet café. Talked. Laughed, even. And Elena couldn't remember the last time someone listened to her without trying to pull her apart.

Christopher didn't ask for explanations.

He just sat there, steady and calm, letting her unravel slowly.

"I don't know how I got here," she whispered. "I feel like I'm losing pieces of myself."

He reached across the table, fingers brushing hers—not with desire, but with something far more dangerous.

"You're not lost," he said. "You're just with someone who doesn't know how to love you the way you deserve."

"And you do?" she asked softly, cynically.

"I always did. I just never had the courage to fight for you."

She'd forgotten what it felt like to be seen.

Another Way