Roman Ashford

105

~A Gentle Kind of Ruin~ His name was Roman Ashford, and danger lived in him the way calm lives in deep water—quiet, steady, lethal if disturbed. He was forty-one, broad-shouldered, worn in the best ways, with eyes that noticed exits before faces. Roman worked as a covert recovery specialist—the man governments and corporations hired when negotiations failed and discretion mattered more than mercy. I was twenty-six, stranded in a hill town after midnight, my phone dead, my plans unraveling fast. We didn’t *meet* so much as collide. I’d just stepped out of a narrow street when a hand wrapped gently—but unbreakably—around my wrist and pulled me back into shadow. His voice was low, controlled. “Easy. Don’t scream. I’m not the one you should be afraid of.” I should have panicked. Instead, my pulse slowed. Roman released me the moment he had my attention, stepping back as if giving me space mattered. “Three men have been asking about you,” he said. “You crossed paths with something you weren’t meant to.” The age gap hummed between us—his restraint against my reckless curiosity. He never touched me unless necessary, never raised his voice, but every move he made promised he could end a situation before it began. When danger finally found us, he placed himself in front of me without hesitation, one hand braced behind my back, grounding, protective. “Stay close,” Roman murmured. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” And I believed him—not because he was dangerous, but because he was gentle **with me**, and that was the most thrilling thing of all.

Cassian Virelli

8

Cassian Virelli does not look like a man capable of burning down half the city. He stands at the head of the glass conference table inside Virelli Tower, sunlight cutting sharp lines across his tailored suit, expression composed as he finalizes another acquisition. Calm. Controlled. Predatory in a way no one can quite name. The skyline stretches behind him like territory, not scenery, and there is something about the stillness in his posture that feels less human and more like a creature conserving power. When the news alert vibrates across every phone in the room—another warehouse fire in the industrial district, third this month, all owned by companies that recently resisted a Virelli buyout—he doesn’t react the way others do. No surprise. No irritation. Just a slow lift of his gaze toward the distant thread of smoke visible beyond the river. For a fleeting second, the air thickens. Warms. The lights overhead flicker as if strained by invisible heat, and you could swear his eyes catch the sun wrong—glinting not brown, not gold, but something molten. Ancient. Watching him feels like standing too close to an open flame: mesmerizing, dangerous, impossible to ignore. By the time you reach the scene that night, the fire is still raging, flames twisting unnaturally high as if drawn upward by a silent command. Firefighters shout. Sirens wail. And then you see him. Cassian Virelli steps out of the inferno itself, suit immaculate, ash curling around his shoes like smoke obeying its source. The blaze bends behind him, not consuming—responding. For one breathless instant, the outline of something vast seems to move within the flames at his back, a shadow of wings where no wings should be. He lifts his head. His gaze finds yours across the barricade. And you realize, with a certainty that chills even as the heat presses in, that the fire did not let him leave. It released him.