Simple.
Except nothing about Arkane Young was simple.
Society gossips loved to tag him as one of San Antonio’s most elusive billionaires, and she finally understood why. Benedict Young—the brother after Lucius—was impossible to ignore. The media couldn’t get enough of his golden otherworldliness, that ethereal magnetism that made women lose their minds in his presence.
But Arkane?
He was the shadow you didn’t notice until you did. And then you couldn’t look away.
Dark hair. Dark eyes. Features that were all sharp angles and brooding intensity. The old-timers at the company liked to whisper that he was the spitting image of his late father—the same dangerous beauty, the same commanding height, the same air of coiled stillness that made you feel like prey even when he wasn’t looking at you.
He never sought the spotlight. Never demanded attention the way his brothers did just by existing.His strategy,Krizette had come to realize,wasn’t intimidation or charm.
It was absence.
You couldn’t compete with someone who simply wasn’t there.
And maybe that was why she couldn’t stop watching him now, in one of those rare moments when hewaspresent. His focus was absolute, his entire being consumed by the work beneath his hands. He turned the leather, examining a seam that looked flawless to her untrained eye but apparently required additional attention.
What would it feel like, she couldn’t help wondering, to have that intensity turned on her, and—
An impatient order from her boss interrupted Krizette’s thoughts, and she forced her attention back to the camera’s viewfinder. The rest of their team was already packing up around her, tripods folding, equipment cases clicking shut. The session was ending, which meant her chance was ending too.
Two months of working here, and she had yet to exchange more than a handful of words with the man who signed her paychecks. He wasn’t cold, exactly. Just...contained. Present but unreachable.
But there were moments. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it rare kind. Moments where one could catch a slight curve to his lips when someone made an unexpectedly clever observation or a glint in those dark eyes that hinted at depths he kept carefully hidden.
Arkane was still bent over his work, and Krizette’s heart was hammering because maybe—just maybe, if she could just work up the nerve to—
Riiing.
The sound of his phone shattered the moment, Arkane turning his back on the camera as he answered the call, and just like that, Krizette’s last hope of catching the billionaire’s attention crumbled into nothing.
Unaware of his effect on the videographer, Arkane was already slipping out of the workshop, the phone pressed to his ear. By the time he reached his office and closed the door behind him, his father’s voice was filling the silence.
“Can you take a video call? Your mother and I need to speak with you.”
No small talk, no pleasantries, and that alone told Arkane this was serious.
“Give me a moment.”
He settled behind his desk and pulled up Zoom on his laptop. His parents’ faces appeared on screen within seconds—his mother Joy, still striking in her sixties with her silver-blonde hair swept back, and beside her, Aldrich Lim. Silver-haired. Steady-eyed. Wearing his customary plaid shirt and the quiet authority that had steadied their family through more than one storm.
“We’ve already spoken to the others,” Aldrich relayed. “They’re in the city, so it was easier to meet in person. But since you’re out in the hills...”
Arkane only nodded. His family had long accepted that he preferred solitude over proximity. They never tried to change him for it. It was one of the many reasons he loved them.
“I’ll get straight to the point.” Aldrich’s gaze held his through the screen. “My contacts have confirmed that the hospital fire was arson.”
Arkane’s jaw tightened.
“And Lana?”
“Still under investigation. But there’s enough circumstantial evidence to suggest she may be connected.”
Arkane thought of his brother Benedict. Proud. Private. The kind of man who would rather bleed out in silence than admit he needed help. And Lana—the wife who had made Benedict’s life a living hell for five years—was now potentially tied to arson.
He wasn’t even surprised.
