Prologue
Vivienne
Some ruins are beautiful.
The kind you stand before in some forgotten part of Europe, camera in hand, marveling at the way time can destroy something and still leave it holy. Still leave it standing. Cracked, crumbled—and unforgettable.
Other ruins…They come dressed like men.
The kind who don’t ask for your name.
Who doesn’t care about rules.
Who kisses you like they want to consume your sins and spit out your name in fire.
Ares Vlahos was that kind.
He was a wrecking force wrapped in silk and sin. A beautiful, broken warning I didn’t listen to until it was too late. The kind of man who saw you—not the mask, not the posture, but the raw, aching core beneath. And once he did, he never looked away.
I should’ve walked.I did.Once.
But some fires don’t go out just because you turn your back on them.Some burn hotter the farther you run.
And I wasn’t ready for what would happen when he came looking for me.Not with teeth.Not with hands.
But with need.And hunger.And a promise in his eyes I wasn’t sure I wanted him to keep.
This is the story of how I touched something dangerous.How it touched me back.And how, together, we became something twisted.
Something that never should’ve survived.
But did.
Something that still ruins me.
Ares
Some things you don’t walk away from.Even if they leave you bleeding.
Vivienne Lavagne was one of them.
She didn’t come into my life soft or slow.She crashed into it—sharp words, grey eyes, and a body that felt like sin wrapped in silk.
She didn’t beg.Didn’t cling.
She just looked at me like she saw through every carefully constructed lie I’d built to survive.
And then she left.
No note.No name.Just a memory that refused to rot.
I should’ve let it go.
Should’ve let her go.
I’d spent years building a life on cold detachment and controlled chaos. A system that worked. That kept me from turning into something worse.
But Vivienne lit a fuse in me I haven’t figured out how to put out.
She made me want.
And now, the woman who walked away like I was nothing has no idea what she’s started.Because I don’t chase.I burn.
And if I have to set the whole world on fire to find her again—
So be it.
