The air in the room was damp and burning hot.

The heat coming off the man felt like a wave crashing over her.

"Feels that good, huh? Listen to you acting all soft like that, mm?" He laughed lazily by her ear, the lifted ending of his voice low and rough. "Then—"

"How about this?"

"Ah!"

Mia Thornton’s eyes flew open.

Her heart dropped like she’d fallen from a height, missing one hard, vicious beat.

A few seconds later, when her mind finally clicked back into place, she realized—

It was just a dream...

But that last movement from the man in the dream had been way too real. Even awake, she still felt dry-throated, hot-faced, her pulse going absolutely feral.

It took her a long while to come back to herself. Then she reached out and touched the spot beside her.

Empty.

Cold.

That so-called husband of hers still hadn’t come home.

Mia swept her long hair back and let out a slow breath before getting out of bed to pour herself some water.

After only a few steps, she felt uncomfortable all over. Annoyed, she opened the closet, grabbed a clean set of clothes, and went into the bathroom to change.

Women had needs too.

Same as men.

Especially a woman like her—someone whose married life had once been... active, to say the least.

Back then, they almost never slept before three or four in the morning. But after that day, that incident, her dirt-cheap husband had taken over an overseas posting and hadn’t been back in nearly a year.

No wonder she’d dreamed about him.

About one of those nights between them.

After changing, Mia had meant to rinse everything out and hang it up, but then the phone on the nightstand rang. In the dead of night, the sound was abrupt enough to make her nerves jump.

Still, she was a surgeon. Getting called in for emergency surgery at night was normal for her, so at first she didn’t think much of it.

But when she answered, the voice on the other end was a strange man’s.

"Hello, is this Ms. Mia Thornton?"

“Speaking. Who is this?”

“Hello, ma’am. This is the police from Huaihai Middle Road Station. Sebastian Thornton is your husband, right? He got drunk at a bar tonight and got into a fight. Please come to the station now and help us deal with it.”

Mia Thornton froze for a second.

Sebastian Thornton was back in the country?

Not only back, but he’d managed to land himself straight in a police station.

That really wasn’t something she had seen coming. She paused, then said, “Okay. I’ll be there right away.”

She changed into something suitable for going out, grabbed her car keys, and headed out.

Huaihai Middle Road was the most famous nightlife strip in Beicheng. Neon lights bled into each other in wild colors, music drifted in and out of the night air, and it was a pretty long drive from the villa out in the suburbs. By the time Mia arrived, it was already four in the morning.

There were tons of bars in this area, and where there were bars, trouble was never far behind. In that darkest stretch just before dawn, the police station was still packed.

Mia pushed open the glass door and spotted Sebastian Thornton at first glance, sitting on a white metal chair.

Even in a place this noisy and chaotic, he was still the one people noticed first.

It was like he had some invisible barrier around him too, a whole patch of space carved out just for him, with no one sitting anywhere near him.

They hadn’t seen each other in a year, but Mia’s eyes still moved over him on instinct. He hadn’t changed at all.

White dress shirt. Black suit pants. No tie, no jacket. The expensive custom fabric still looked crisp, not a wrinkle in sight, and the tailored cut fit his one-meter-eighty-eight frame perfectly.

He sat with his legs slightly apart, two buttons at his collar undone, exposing the sharp line of his throat and half a collarbone. His suit pants had ridden up a little from the way he was sitting, black socks wrapped clean around his ankles. The whole vibe was lazy, effortless, and way too sexy.

His head was tipped slightly down. Maybe because he was drunk, the corners of his eyes were tinged red. On top of his usual good looks, that added a dangerous kind of allure, almost unfairly tempting.

That kind of beauty, that almost toxic level of attraction, she used to catch only once in a while—usually in bed, when he was really worked up and she happened to glimpse it for a moment or two.

Now it was just out there in the open, on full display for everyone.

No wonder every person walking in or out of the station couldn’t help sneaking another look at him.

Honestly, seeing him was basically a free bonus.

The heir to the top powerhouse family. Rich, powerful, brilliant, gorgeous.

In all of Beicheng, nobody dared mess with him. Normally he was like the moon hanging high in the sky—distant, cold, untouchable, never coming down to earth.

So what kind of cursed luck had hit him tonight for him to end up being held in a place like this?

How could he even do this?

Maybe he felt her gaze. The man slowly lifted his head, his dark eyes a little unfocused, like he wasn’t fully sober. It was hard to tell whether he’d recognized Mia Thornton or not. But those peach-blossom eyes of his still looked the same as always—ridiculously, annoyingly “affectionate.”

Mia didn’t walk over to him right away. She went straight to the front desk and stated her identity first. "Hello, I’m Mia Thornton. I got a call asking me to come here."

A young police officer came out. He was the one handling the case. Mia noticed his badge number started with an "A," and the insignia on his shoulder marked him as auxiliary police.

Probably a new hire. No wonder he didn’t recognize the crown prince of the Thornton family in Beicheng.

"So you’re Sebastian Thornton’s wife, right? Your husband got into a fight at a bar. For the details, you can just watch the surveillance footage."

The officer pulled up the recording. The camera had been mounted almost directly above Sebastian, basically pointed right at him.

Even in a state that was only barely sober, Sebastian was still so good-looking it was almost absurd. His sharp bone structure held up perfectly under the trash-tier bar lighting, the kind that made normal people look haunted. Between his brows and eyes was that same careless, worldly air, like nothing in life could really get under his skin.

One hand was in his pocket. The other held his phone. No one knew what he was looking at. Then, out of nowhere, a woman with a smoking-hot figure ran up to him and wrapped her arms right around his waist.

Mia froze on the spot.

The woman stood on tiptoe and whispered something in Sebastian’s ear—two sentences, maybe. Whatever it was, he seemed interested. The corner of his mouth curved up. At that moment, he was still wearing those gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his high nose, and the whole vibe was pure polished scumbag in glasses—cultured on the outside, bad news underneath.

Mia tightened her grip on the car keys in her hand until the sharp edges bit into her palm.

As the footage continued, Sebastian ran into a few young people who had just stepped out of the elevator. The surveillance audio was full of static, so it was impossible to hear what they were saying. All she saw was Sebastian taking off his glasses in that slow, unhurried way and slipping them into his pocket.

Then the mood flipped in a second.

They started fighting.

Mia knew exactly how good Sebastian was in a fight. The Thornton family had hired top-level coaches since he was young. What he knew wasn’t random street punching and kicking—it was proper combat training. He took them down in just a few moves.

Bar security rushed over after hearing the commotion, stopped the fight, and called the police. Then the officers stepped in.

The whole thing was crystal clear.

And yet what stayed burned into Mia’s mind was still that image of the woman holding Sebastian around the waist.

She looked at the half-conscious man over there, then at the young people who’d gotten beaten up. Among them were two girls. Once they found out she was the wife of the man who’d thrown the punches, and after watching that footage, the way they looked at her turned a little sympathetic.

Her husband was maybe cheating, and that alone would’ve been enough of a mess. But now he’d also caused trouble, landed himself in a police station, and she, the legal wife, had to come bail him out.

It was so melodramatic it felt unreal. Absolute trainwreck material.

"Miss, we’re seriously innocent," one of the girls said quickly. "My friend was joking with me. He asked how I had a little tummy a few days ago but not today, and whether I’d secretly gotten pregnant and then secretly had an abortion. He probably thought we were talking about the woman next to him, so he just snapped and started hitting people."

The words "secretly had an abortion" made Mia’s whole back prickle in an instant. Goosebumps rose across her skin. Almost without thinking, she reached for her lower abdomen.

At last, she understood.

She finally understood why Sebastian Thornton—who in front of everyone always looked easygoing, refined, noble, like some elegant young master who could do whatever he wanted and still stay graceful—would end up fighting in a bar like some reckless thug.