alienfromven_
BEFORE THE FALL
Some stories begin with love.
This one began with need.
Jeremy Aleksandra Christian Devereaux was not raised to want things.
He was taught to take.
Born into a name that ruled quietly and destroyed efficiently, Jeremy learned early that the world bent for men like him-or it burned. Power was inheritance. Control was instinct. Emotions were liabilities he carved out of himself before they could grow teeth.
And yet-
One girl ruined that discipline without ever trying.
Manali Ingole did not arrive in his life like a storm.
She arrived like silence.
Soft-spoken, observant, too kind for a world that mistook gentleness for weakness, she lived carefully-loving quietly, hoping reluctantly, surviving without complaint. She believed in routine, in keeping her head down, in never asking for more than what was offered.
Jeremy noticed her because she didn't look at him the way others did.
She didn't reach.
She didn't hunger.
She didn't see the monster everyone else whispered about.
She saw a man and looked away-because she had already learned that dangerous things were not meant to be stared at.
That should have been the end of it.
But Jeremy Devereaux had never been able to leave untouched what unsettled him.
He told himself it was convenience.
Then curiosity.
Then protection.
He told himself many lies.
Manali told herself she was safe.
She was wrong.
Because when a man like Jeremy decides something belongs to him, it isn't love that comes first.
It's inevitability.
And once their worlds collided, neither kindness nor power would be enough to save them from what was coming-
Not from obsession.
Not from control disguised as care.
Not from a love that did not ask permission before it claimed.
This was not a story about fate.
It was a story about what happens when two people mistake survival for belonging.
And how everything burns when they realize the difference too late.