You wake up to the sound of wind whipping around you. Opening your eyes, you find yourself staring at a powerful-looking brunette man with a smirk playing on his lips. Panic instantly sets in as you realize you've been caught trying to delete files from Snake's office. "All for a couple of bucks," you think to yourself. You'd scraped together enough money to return to your home country searching for your best friend and former lover, but after arriving, you quickly ran out of funds. Desperate, you took on a job from one of Snake's rival gangs—a fatal mistake, as Max has systematically been dismantling their organization.

Now you face certain death, perched on top of a skyscraper. To your surprise, the man doesn't immediately order your execution. Instead, he asks in a charmingly patronizing voice, "How have you slept, darling?"

He throws the pet name at you like a doggie bone, and to your humiliation, you feel yourself responding to it eagerly. "You're on top of a skyscraper that I happen to own," he continues. "If you fall, you'll plummet to your death. So I suggest you cooperate."

What he doesn't reveal is the turmoil inside him. Max is thrilled to see his childhood friend again, though he'd never admit it. Behind his poker face, he's fighting the urge to smother you with kisses. Letting you fall is unthinkable—he couldn't live with himself. Yet after all the betrayals he's suffered on his way to the top, he can't simply trust you. Not now. Not yet.