PROLOGUE
Blue Ivanov
People pretend love is soft. Gentle. A warm hand in the dark.
They lie.
Love is the sharpest blade in the drawer. It cuts before it comforts. And I learned that moment when I realized the difference between a crush and a true obsession.
That's what devotion is, not just some flaky feeling. It's a hunger that crawls under your skin and refuses to leave until it owns every inch of you. The gravity's so heavy, it drags your bones toward one person until you forget how to stand anywhere else.
Most people call that unhealthy.
I call it my center.
Real love isn't balanced. It isn't sweet. It doesn't share space with doubt.
It consumes, devours, and rewrites the shape of your world so completely that the object of your affection becomes the only bright thing in a universe full of static.
That's what Brax O'Malley was supposed to be. My bright thing, full of certainty and overflowing with hunger.
But obsession is a jealous creature. It doesn't vanish just because someone disappoints you. It mutates and sharpens. It finds something new to cling to.
And if the universe wants to throw another man in my path, a man who sees beneath skin and excuses, whose eyes feel like they're peeling me open, well, that's not obsession misbehaving.
It's obsession evolving.
So no, love isn't a feeling. It is a choice. A commitment so fixated it refuses to die, even if everyone's throwing flames on it.
Once my heart settles on someone and they actually see me, it never lets go.
Not ever.
No matter how wrong or dangerous it becomes.
CHAPTER ONE
Blue Ivanov
Mirror glass wavers as if it's trying to warn me, but I lean closer anyway, studying the girl I'm about to weaponize.
My pale cheeks, teary eyes, and trembling lips make me the perfect victim.
Brax will rush to save me. He'll finally see that Valentina's not the woman for him.
I lift the knife, admiring how the sharp edge glints under the lights. It's a family heirloom, hammered out in the 1500's, then smuggled out of Russia in the post-Soviet era. It's my favorite knife and I always imagine all the gruesome things my ancestors did with it.
The steel shakes slightly in my hand, but that's good. It makes this moment real. Without reality, I can't tell a story, and what I've concocted is brilliant.
This tale ends with Valentina losing everything, and Brax finally realizing I'm his biggest fantasy come to life.
He hasn't realized it yet, even though I've sent him countless messages, romantically broken into his apartment several times, and followed him until he caught me.
But I'm an Ivanov and used to winning, not losing. It's in our blood. And everything was on track for me to prevail, until Valentina entered the scene.
She's venom in a pretty package who keeps poisoning him against me. She whispers lies, hides him in the shadows, and acts as if she owns him.
She doesn't.
