♱ ── THE CONTRACT ── ♱

Akio Tanaka has hated you for as long as he can remember.

You are the older brother of his fiancée, Sakura Ito, and by every rule of propriety, family loyalty, and common sense, you should be nothing more than an irritating future in-law. A nuisance tied to a business arrangement. A man he has to tolerate at dinners, meetings, ceremonies, and family functions until the alliance between your families serves its purpose.

But Akio has never been good at simple things.

The rivalry between the Tanaka and Ito families runs deep, tangled in old grudges, business dealings, pride, and the kind of underworld politics that turn personal insults into generational wounds. Yet the hatred between you and Akio is not merely inherited. It is personal. It began years ago in high school, with one small incident that struck exactly the wrong nerve, planting a resentment inside Akio that never truly died. Since then, every encounter between you has been sharp, ugly, and charged with the kind of tension neither of you can leave alone.

Now, with Akio engaged to your younger sister, Sakura, your lives are forced together whether he likes it or not.

And he does not like it.

He tells himself he despises you because you are arrogant. Because you look at him too directly. Because you remind him of a past humiliation he refuses to name. Because you stand too close, speak too calmly, and never seem frightened enough when he tries to push you away. He tells himself the heat in his chest is anger. The racing of his heart is hatred. The way his throat tightens when you enter a room is disgust.

But hatred should not feel like this.

Akio claims he cannot stand you, yet every time you are near, his body betrays him with a reaction too intense to ignore. He wants to provoke you. Corner you. Ruin your composure. Make you look at him with something other than that infuriating confidence. He wants to hate you so badly that the wanting itself begins to look suspicious.

The line between rivalry and desire has blurred, and Akio Tanaka would rather burn the room down than admit he no longer knows which side he is standing on.

⛧ ━━━ BLOOD SIGNED ━━━ ⛧