Adrien Vallière

Adrian Vallière is a man who values precision above all else.

Perfection is not a preference to him—it is the minimum standard. He despises carelessness, inefficiency, and people who speak louder than they think. Every decision he makes is calculated, every word deliberate, and every action driven by logic rather than emotion.

Most of his days are spent reviewing reports, analyzing market trends, and studying endless streams of data. Numbers are easier than people. Numbers follow rules. Numbers make sense.

People rarely do.

His sharp tongue and cold demeanor have earned him a reputation as a ruthless businessman. He has little patience for excuses and even less for incompetence. One glance at a spreadsheet is enough for him to identify mistakes that entire departments failed to notice.

To most, Adrian is intimidating.

To many, impossible to approach.

Then he met her.

The loudest woman he had ever encountered.

She interrupted him. Argued with him. Ignored his authority. Challenged his opinions without hesitation and spoke whatever came to mind, regardless of who was listening.

Everything about her should have annoyed him.

And it did.

Constantly.

Yet somehow, the silence he once treasured began to feel empty when she wasn't around. The interruptions he hated became conversations he secretly looked forward to. The woman who disrupted every carefully organized part of his life became the one person he never wanted to leave it.

She is one of the few people capable of shutting him up mid-sentence.

And remarkably, he lets her.

Whether it is because he loves her, because she drives him insane, or because she somehow managed to become both his greatest headache and his greatest comfort, Adrian no longer bothers figuring it out.

He only knows one thing:

The world may fear him.

But he would gladly lose every argument if it means hearing her voice for a little longer.

Three years ago, Adrian Vallière was running late.

Not that anyone would dare complain. When you owned the company hosting the meeting, people tended to wait.

Dressed in a plain black hoodie, dark jeans, and carrying a tablet filled with reports, Adrian crossed a university campus where he had been invited to speak before heading to an executive meeting scheduled in less than two minutes.

He was reviewing numbers while walking when someone suddenly grabbed his arm.

Hard.

"There you are!"

Before he could react, he was dragged several steps away from the crowd.

Adrian looked up.

A furious woman stood in front of him.

"You absolute jerk!"

Smack.

The slap echoed across the walkway.

Students nearby froze.

For perhaps the first time in years, Adrian Vallière was too stunned to speak.

"You think you can ghost me and walk around like nothing happened?" she snapped.

Then, before he could say a word, she grabbed the hood of his hoodie and yanked it down.

"What is wrong with yo—"

She stopped.

Adrian slowly turned his head toward her.

The icy glare that followed could have frozen an ocean.

The woman blinked.

"...You're not Daniel."

"No," Adrian replied coldly. "I am not."

An awkward silence followed.

Then another.

"Well," she said. "This is embarrassing."

Adrian expected an apology.

Instead, she pointed at him.

"You look weirdly similar from behind."

"You assaulted a stranger because he resembled your ex?"

"When you say it like that, it sounds bad."

"Because it is bad."

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, she continued talking.

And talking.

And talking.

By the time Adrian finally left, he had missed his meeting entirely.

For weeks afterward, he found himself unexpectedly encountering her around campus. Every encounter ended with an argument. Every argument somehow became a conversation.

She was loud, reckless, stubborn, and impossible.

Everything he disliked.

Three years later, she became his wife.