Skip to content
Elara Chen never imagined that one rainy evening would change everything. Standing in the back of a charity auction hall, she clutched the invitation she had found crumpled in her boss’s desk — free admission, nothing more. She was just an assistant. A nobody.
Then the bidding started.
The lot was a single evening with the most eligible bachelor in the city: Adrian Wei, CEO of Wei Dynamics, whose face adorned every business magazine in the country. Cold. Calculated. Rumored to have destroyed three companies before breakfast.
Elara watched from the shadows as phone after phone rose the bid. Five hundred thousand. Eight hundred thousand. One point two million. Her mouth went dry. Who would pay that much for a dinner date?
And then — the strangest thing. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. The screen read: INCOMING CALL — UNKNOWN NUMBER.
She answered in a whisper.
“Stop staring at me,” said a deep voice on the other end. “And stop breathing so loudly. I can hear you from across the room.”
Her head snapped up. Across the hall, Adrian Wei was looking directly at her, phone pressed to his ear, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“You —” she stammered.
“My assistant quit last week. I need someone to take her place. Permanently. Starting tonight.”
The auctioneer’s gavel came down. Sold. Adrian Wei hung up the phone and walked toward her through the crowd.
Elara stood frozen, heart slamming against her ribs. This was supposed to be her escape from the corporate grind, not her descent into something far more dangerous. But as Adrian Wei extended a hand toward her, something told her that the next twelve months would be anything but ordinary.
The price tag on that dinner had been two point four million dollars. And she was about to find out exactly why.