Maven and Adrianna were born on opposite sides of a century-old feud-two scions of rival dynasties steeped in pride, power, and revenge. He's fire. She's ice. Their worlds were never meant to merge, yet fate orchestrates their collision with unrelen...
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The club pulsed like a heartbeat—loud, messy, alive.
Bass thudded deep in my chest, and bodies moved around me in waves. The lights cut through the dark in bursts of gold, red, violet. It was the kind of place where no one asked questions. Where you could disappear into sweat and shadow, and no one would care unless you wanted them to.
And tonight, I didn't want to be Adrianna Sobreviñas.
I wanted to be anonymous.
Just a girl in a crimson silk slip dress, four inches of heel, and no last name.
No handlers. No driver waiting outside. No stares from society's glass towers. Just me and a gin and tonic that bit back when I drank it.
I slid onto a barstool like it owed me something, legs crossed, lips unsmiling. My hair was down—loose and wild, not Sobreviñas-coiffed into submission—and I kept my eyes fixed on the mirror behind the bar.
If the city wanted to watch me, it would have to do it through reflection.
With a last name like Sobreviñas, you'd think I'd carry even a sliver of Spanish elegance, a trace of dolor, maybe. But instead, here I am—slouched alone in a plush booth at Xylos, a rented bottle of JD and Pinot Noir sitting untouched in front of me like uninvited guests.
Still, I did this to myself. I'm playing the part of the friendless loser pretty well since I came back to Manila. Elise, Mandy, and the rest of my Brent International School clique have all moved on with their glittering lives overseas. We've all grown up—and apart.
Real adulthood has caught up with us. Real problems. Real heartbreaks.
With a sigh, I threw my phone into airplane mode to stop my brother's incessant calls. I wasn't in the mood for anyone's concern. Especially not after tonight. Not after that dinner.
I'm not proud of any of this. Not my sudden return to the Philippines, not that disastrous family reunion courtesy of Camilla (Qué barbaridad!), and definitely not this poorly thought-out attempt to drown my feelings in alcohol at a place I don't even belong in.
Clubbing isn't my scene. I've done reckless things before—summer escapades in Mexico, skydiving in Lithuania, that one weekend at a cabin in Minnesota—but this? This was new.
I'd never set foot in a club like Privé before. Usually, my rare trips back to the Philippines were strictly Abuelita-mandated: charity galas, crocheting with the Titas of Manila, sipping Earl Grey while discussing World War II on the veranda of our ancestral home in Tarlac.
Hardly the makings of a wild child.
No, the wildest thing I ever did was survive my mother's downfall. And that... that was enough.
I was fourteen when I came home from school and found her in the bathtub. Pale. Still. Dressed in her wedding gown. Drunk beyond salvation.
