Chapter 4 The Earrings She Left Behind

Michael Robb woke slowly, the sheets tangled around his legs and the scent of warm vanilla and soft citrus still clinging to his skin.

He reached out instinctively, expecting to find her nestled beside him.

But his hand met nothing but space.

He sat up, blinking against the early morning light as reality snapped into place. The woman the lioness was gone.

His eyes scanned the room. No note. No trace. Only the shirt she had worn was folded at the edge of the bed, and sitting next to it was a pair of delicate, gold hoop earrings.

He picked them up slowly, his fingers grazing the metal. It was such a small thing simple, unassuming. But it was hers.

And somehow... it mattered.

Michael had taken dozens of women to bed. Some wanted his power. Some wanted his money. None had mattered.

But Vera Stanford?

She had flipped his world upside down with a single kiss and disappeared like a ghost in the morning sun.

She gave me her virginity.

That realization burned itself into his mind. He hadn't meant for it to happen like that. It was supposed to be just one night a beautiful, unexpected collision of desire. But now she had branded him. Not with sex, but with something far more dangerous.

Emotion.

Michael didn't do feelings.

He didn't chase women.

And yet... here he was, sitting in his penthouse like a man possessed, staring at a pair of earrings and wondering who the hell she was.

He didn't even know her full name.

Only Vera. No phone number. No address. Just a whispered name between moans and the faint scent of lavender shampoo on his pillow.

He should've let it go. He tried to.

He went about his day like nothing had changed business meetings, calls with international partners, handling the occasional threat from rival families. But at night, when he lay alone in his bed, his mind wandered back to her.

The way her thighs trembled around his hips.

The way she had looked at him not with fear, not with awe but with choice.

And then, just like that, she was gone.

"She didn't even take her earrings," he murmured to himself, gripping them tighter.

It wasn't like him to care.

But damn it, he did.

He needed to find her.

Not because he was lonely. Not because he wanted more sex.

But because something about her pulled at a thread deep inside him something he hadn't felt in years. She didn't know who he was. She didn't care about his money or his empire. And still, she had given him a piece of herself that could never be undone.

Where the hell are you, Vera?

He placed the earrings in a velvet box and locked them in the drawer of his nightstand as if preserving a relic.

Something told him this wasn't over.

Something told him... fate wasn't finished with them yet.