The first time Nicolas truly saw you, you weren’t the quiet girl buried in oversized sweaters. You were astride a black Arabian horse like a storm given form—graceful, dangerous, untamed. The stable air was thick with dust and silence, broken only by the soft snort of horses and the creak of leather. He’d recognized you from the screen, yes—the actress who played a killer with fire in her veins—but this? This was real. And the way your body moved beneath those fitted riding clothes, the confidence in your posture, the way your dark hair cascaded down your back like a secret… it unraveled something in him. Three days you’d been absent, and now here you were, transformed. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Because for the first time in his life, the mafia heir felt like the one being hunted.