Chapter 1
People who dream of romance are usually fickle. And the man sitting beside Brian Levin was the most romantic, the most hopelessly romantic, and at the same time the most fickle person Brian knew, the kind of man who could change his mind several times in a single second.
Rose’s mood was as foul as the gray sky outside, the kind that looked ready to produce a hurricane at any moment.
“Boss, we’ve heard from Motorix Primo.”
Maximillian Rosenberg. The world knew him by his nickname, Rose.
“They say the meeting with Citroën went well. Apparently, Citroën seems far more interested in Motorix Primo than in Wellington Industries. If they end up under Wellington Industries, it’s obvious Citroën will be carved up until nothing is left but the name. So the Primo Group has a request for you, Boss…”
Brian, who kept work and personal matters strictly separate, called Rose “Boss.” Rose was younger than Brian, and he was the CEO of Doodle Investment.
“…Are you listening?”
Currently, Rose was dismissing Brian’s words without giving them much attention. He was far too busy holding back tears, tablet in hand.
“Boss?”
Brian knew exactly what his boss was watching without even looking. It was a romance drama featuring aristocratic men and women dressed in elegant Regency-era costumes. Rose was completely absorbed in a moving scene where two people forgot rank, pride, and, for tonight, even who they were, as they fell in love. His shoulders gave the occasional tremble.
As of today, Rose was on his three hundred thirty-ninth viewing of the Bridgerton series, so of course he knew the tragic developments still to come. The lovers who had only just fallen in love, who deserved nothing but happiness, would end up suffering because of that very love, enduring pain that cut like a knife and crying themselves to sleep night after night.
“Haa…”
Unable to bear the swelling sorrow any longer, Rose finally paused the playback.
“Why is it always the couples you most want to see happy who get hit with trials like this?”
“…Please. When a person is talking to you, could you at least pretend to listen?”
“Love really is like a Rafflesia…”
Brian racked his brain, trying to make sense of the word he’d just heard, but he couldn’t understand it for the life of him.
“…And why exactly do you think that?”
Rose answered at once, like someone who had been desperately waiting for Brian to ask.
“After it seduces you, it devours you. The agony would be enough to melt every bone and organ in your body. You know falling for it means death. But you can’t refuse it, and you can never escape. So if that isn’t love, what is?”
Brian stared back in silence.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s nothing, Boss. I only hope you get to experience a love exactly like that yourself.”
“Thanks for saying something nice for a change, Brian.”
For Brian, who had taken his childhood sweetheart to prom, married her, built a happy home, and was now raising a daughter and son he adored beyond measure, it was an analogy he couldn’t begin to understand. But sometimes, a bonus signed off on by one’s boss had the power to shatter truths one had believed in for an entire lifetime.
“So. What were we talking about?”
“Ah. Motorix Primo and Citroën had a meeting.”
“Did they sign the acquisition contract?”
“Not yet, but things are looking positive.”
At that speculative answer, Rose let his gorgeous face crumple without a second thought.
“Could you stick to things that are certain, Brian?”
“Until a few days ago, you told me to report everything as soon as I had a lead.”
“That was when I was free. Right now I’m, hngh, busy.”
Rose pointed at his tablet, his eyes red-rimmed from holding back tears, as if to say, Can’t you see?
You look plenty free to me right now!
With the patience he had spent more than a decade honing, Brian managed to keep his mouth shut.
“Understood. I’ll report it later…”
The scene where the two of them fell for each other was Rose’s favorite part, after all. Brian would never dare criticize the things his boss loved and enjoyed.
Rose gathered his overflowing emotions and spoke.
“Haa… It’s so romantic. Love is beautiful, painful, and intoxicating.”
Brian let Rose’s words wash over him, kept his eyes fixed on his own tablet, and buried himself in his actual work. Looking at his boss’s face while nodding along to such nonsense would taint the impeccable work record he had built as Doodle Investment’s COO and the CEO’s chief secretary.
Even so, Brian often forgot what he was supposed to do and say whenever he came face-to-face with Rose. Of course, it wasn’t because he had any personal interest in Rose, or anything remotely like that. He was simply convinced that if anyone could make you shut your mouth just by existing, his boss belonged at the top of the list.
Rose possessed a kind of unreal beauty that could stop your breath as easily as his name suggested. His eyes were tinged red from swallowing down a rush of emotion, and against his pale skin, it gave him a fragile, mournful air. His blue irises, said to be the color of the most beautiful stretch of the Mediterranean, were deep enough to draw a person in. Add to that soft golden hair that looked as if it would fall out of place at the lightest touch, and his beauty had to have been crafted with loving care by Venus herself.
And yet, though Rose knew how to use his beauty, he chose not to. He had been trailed by countless paparazzi since childhood, but he never became an actor. Nor did he become a model, despite his excellent physique. He hardly ever smiled, even with a face that pretty. He didn’t need to bother, because Rose was already the most famous celebrity in America.
So what kind of person was Maximillian Rosenberg, exactly?
Brian Levin, known as one of Rose’s closest confidants, was a man who could publish a two-thousand-page critique on exactly what sort of person his boss was. By Brian’s standards, Rose was as follows.
One. Rose was an ardent fan of Harlequin romances, especially the Bridgerton series.
“Brian. Get in touch with Netflix, would you? It’s already been two months since I went to that advance screening. When on earth are they releasing the next season?”
He had watched the Bridgerton series at least a hundred times per season. No skipping, from beginning to end. The spin-off side story in particular, the one that still made him cry every single time, he had watched more than three hundred times.
“For that to happen, perhaps you shouldn’t have given them eleven hours and forty-seven minutes of feedback that time.”
Two. Since he was young, Rose had poured enormous sums into the streaming industry, and not only that, all to realize the unrealistic dream of being able to play every piece of media in the world with nothing but a remote while lying in bed or reclining in a chair.
“They asked for opinions that would make the show better, so I indulged them and shared my thoughts. Besides, that’s their job. Is it really so hard for content creators to create content and release it? It’s wonderful, isn’t it? One piece of content can give so many people dreams and hope. They shouldn’t make people feel betrayed.”
Three. In other words, Rose was rich.
Calling him simply rich would be misleading. Rose’s fortune changed by the second, multiplied by the minute, and ballooned wildly every time dividend season rolled around. All because he owned shares in countless companies. The only problem was that the sheer volume of those shares had become too vast for any one individual to manage, so Rose had ended up saddled with a title he had never wanted: CEO.
Rose was an investor blessed with an extraordinary kind of luck. He was a red-hot angel investor who had packed his portfolio with Series A shares and undervalued blue chips back when no one else had even noticed them. And he did it without deliberately seeking out future industries or formally studying investment.
Every investment was less a strategy than something he did purely to satisfy his own desires. I hate exhaust fumes, so I should drive a car made with clean energy. I want to lie in bed and watch every movie in the world. Laptops are heavy, so I need a machine that works with just a monitor screen. I want to guzzle healthy soda. I want to drink coffee of the same quality anywhere in the world…
Even when he heard that a scrap of electronic data could be used to buy pizza, Rose bought up a mountain of that coin simply because it sounded fun. Brian, who as usual couldn’t understand him at all, was left agonizing in despair five years later.