When a vendor tried to screw her business, doors opened elsewhere. A “friend of the company” stepped in. Terms shifted. The asshole folded.
When a big client wavered, the booking stabilized. A payment cleared that shouldn’t have. The right strings were pulled.
Everything I did, and continue to do in the shadows, is to keep her world turning. To keep her safe.
Because even from a distance, she’s mine to protect.
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t need to. I just need her safe.
Most would call me obsessed. I call it restraint.
My phone vibrates across the desk, the insistent vibration, yanking me back into the present and slicing through the quiet focus of the office like an unwelcome intrusion. I glance at the screen and see a number I don’t recognize glaring back at me in bold white text. For a moment, I consider letting it go to voicemail, but after the third ring, something nudges me to answer—curiosity, boredom, or maybe just the need for a break from the seemingly endless reports on the table. I swipe to accept the call.
“Bennett,” I say, keeping my tone clipped and professional, already half-expecting a telemarketer or some distant relative coming out of the woodwork chasing family ties.
“Scott Bennett?” The voice on the line hesitates, laced with a nervous tremor that rings faintly familiar, though I can’t pin it down right away.
“Yeah. Who is this?”
A quick, awkward laugh filters through. “It’s Alex Davis—from high school. You might not remember me all that well; I was the one always buried in my Nintendo Switch, barely looking up from a Pokémon battle during lunch.”
The memory sharpens into focus: curly hair flopping over his forehead, that perpetual glow from the handheld screen lighting his face in the cafeteria shadows. He was quiet, unassuming, but yeah—I remember him now. “Alex. Long time. What’s going on?”
He exhales audibly, as if gathering courage. “Right to business; I like that. So I’m in casting these days, working for Apex Entertainment. We’re putting the final touches on contestants for our new dating show—Paradise Found.”
Dating show. The phrase hangs there, absurd and irrelevant to my world of security protocols and estate management. My thumb itches toward the End Call button, ready to politely, but quickly, dismiss this blast from the past and get back to the mountain of work that’s consumed me since my old man’s death—the endless days at Knight Industries as head of security, the tangled inheritance of the family estate, and stepping into the void he left in his business empire.
But Alex barrels on before I can disconnect. “One of our contestants is someone you know, back from high school.”
Great, but…what does this have to do with me?
High school was several lifetimes ago. So unless he’s reminiscing, I struggle to understand why he’s calling me. And someone I know could be any number of forgotten faces. I pause, more out of politeness than interest, my hand still hovering near the phone. “Who?”
“Lyla Clark.”
Her name crashes over me like a rogue wave—cold, forceful, knocking the air from my lungs in a single, brutal instant. For a frozen second, the world narrows to that sound, echoing in my chest. Heat flares through my veins, a savage burn that races down my spine and settles low in my gut, twisting into something feral and unforgiving. Surprise hits first, sharp as a blade, followed by a shockwave of regret and a raw, aching need. Lyla. The one I’ve been circling in my mind for months, ever since Dad’s funeral stripped away the excuses and left me raw with the urge to physically be with her again, to explain the mess of ten years ago. But life piled on: the relentless demands of my work with the Knights, the estates’ legal quagmire, the business I never wanted but couldn’t abandon. And beneath it all, the coward’s fear. That if I showed up now, she’d slam the door in my face, her eyes full of the hurt I’d inflicted when I vanished without a trace.
She’s on a dating show.
The realization weaves through the chaos in my head. Time is slipping away—faster than I realized. For all I know, she’s there to find someone else, to build a connection with a stranger who won’t carry my ghosts. The thought ignites a fresh surge of panic, hot and possessive, clawing at the eyes of my control. The time I have now could be my last chance to win her back or, at least, lay bare the truth of why I left before she leaves for production and moves on for good.
But a darker thread weaves through my brain. Alex’s call feels too pointed, too convenient. He knew us back then. He would’ve seen how inseparable we were, how the air between us always crackled.
“Why are you calling me about this?” I ask, voice low and edged. “It’s not like I can do anything about it.”
“That’s not…entirely true.”
“How so?”
He pauses long enough that I can practically hear his nerves fraying. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“Telling me what?”
Another pause, heavier this time.
“Alex,” I say, sharper now, “you called me for a reason. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just to give me a play-by-play of what Lyla’s doing on your show.”
I hear him exhale deeply on the other end. “If I tell you, this conversation didn’t happen.”
