Shedding the Crimson

The city lights of New York, once a glittering tapestry woven with the threads of my dominion, now seemed to shimmer with a different kind of luminescence. It wasn’t the cold, hard gleam of power I was accustomed to, but something softer, warmer, like the dawn breaking after a long, brutal night. Elias. His name was a whisper on my lips, a phantom touch against my skin, a constant, insistent melody disrupting the silence I had so meticulously cultivated.

For years, my life had been a fortress, each brick laid with ruthless precision, cemented with blood and fear. The name Rose Jackson was synonymous with an iron will, an unyielding grip on the city’s underbelly. I was the queen, the shadow that loomed over every illicit deal, every whispered threat. And then he walked in, a goddamn hurricane disguised as a man, and with a single, devastating storm, he’d begun to dismantle