Aria didn’t bother knocking.
She shoved Damian’s office door open so hard it banged off the stopper, the sound cracking through the quiet like a gunshot. Every head outside in the outer lounge snapped up, but nobody dared step in. The moment the door slammed behind her, the world shrank to two people and four walls.
Damian stood at the far end of the room, jacket off, sleeves rolled, veins standing out along his forearms as he gripped the edge of his desk. Papers were scattered, one chair overturned, a fine crack spidering across the glass wall where he must’ve already lashed out once tonight. His eyes lifted when she entered—dark, burning, already at a breaking point.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he growled.
Aria blinked, breath still tight from the adrenaline that hadn’t left her body since the confrontation hours ago. “Excuse me?”
He stepped away from the desk, the movement predatory, controlled only by a thread. “I saw the footage.”
Her pulse stuttered. “What footage?”
Damian laughed—a low, humorless sound that made the hairs on her arms rise. “Don’t insult me. The east corridor. Two of my own enforcers plotting to poison you. You walking up to them. Alone. Unarmed.” He stalked closer with every word, the anger in his voice sharpening. “You didn’t think I’d notice?”
Aria’s spine tried to straighten of its own accord, but fear coiled under her skin. She forced her chin up anyway. “They were going to kill me. I handled it.”
“You handled it,” he repeated, voice thick with disbelief. “You handled it by walking straight into the mouths of wolves without telling the one man who actually knows how to rip throats out.”
She flinched at his words, but she didn’t step back. “If I run to you every time someone breathes wrong in my direction, I will never become anything except your shadow.”
Damian’s jaw clenched so hard she heard his teeth grind. “You are not listening.”
“No,” she snapped. “You’re not listening.”
He reached her in three strides.
His hand slammed into the glass wall beside her head, hard enough to make it shudder. She jumped, back hitting the cold surface. His other palm landed on the other side of her head a second later, caging her in. The air between them heated instantly, his body only inches away, his breath uneven.
“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me,” he said quietly, dangerously. “Not when you put yourself in the crosshairs of men who would carve you up just to watch me bleed.”
Her heart hammered so loudly she could feel it in her throat. “You think I haven’t been in anyone’s crosshairs before?” she whispered, anger and fear tangling. “This world has wanted me dead since the moment my last name mattered. At least now I’m doing something about it.”
His eyes flashed. “You’re doing something about it by offering yourself as bait.”
“I was not bait,” she bit out. “I was a warning.”
“A warning?” Damian leaned in, his shadow swallowing her. “You think a threat from you means anything to men who have torn people apart for fun?”
“I made them back down,” she said, hating the way her voice shook. “You saw. They listened.”
“They listened,” he snarled, “because they know what I’ll do to them if a single hair on your head moves the wrong way. Don’t confuse fear of me with respect for you.”
The words cut deeper than she expected. Her fingers curled against the glass so she wouldn’t show it. “You trained me,” she whispered. “You’re the one who put me at that table, made me take those trials, told me to stop being helpless. But the second I stand on my own feet, you act like I’ve betrayed you.”
His face twisted, some emotion flickering there that wasn’t pure rage. “I trained you so you’d stop shaking every time someone raised their voice. I trained you so you could breathe without choking on your father’s shadow. I did not train you so you could walk straight into a conversation about your own murder and think that counts as power.”
A bitter laugh broke from her. “You don’t get to decide what counts as my power, Damian.”
“I decide anything that concerns your last breath.” His hands pressed harder into the glass. He was close enough now that she could see the golden flecks in his dark irises, the exhaustion rimmed around them, the frayed edges of a man held together only by anger. “You don’t understand what you are in this war.”
“I understand perfectly,” she shot back. “I am leverage. A last name. A threat. A target. I’ve been all of those my entire life. The only thing that’s changed is you standing in front of me instead of my father.”
His expression darkened like a storm had rolled through him. “Don’t compare me to Navarro.”
“Then stop treating me like a piece on your board,” she said, her voice cracking. “Stop locking me away whenever things get dangerous. Stop acting like the only version of me you can tolerate is caged. I will not be a pet in a glass tower you bleed for.”
The insult hit. She saw it in the way his eyes narrowed, the way his throat moved as if he was swallowing fire.
“You think that’s what this is?” he asked, voice low. “You think I’m doing this because I like the leash?”
“Aren’t you?” she whispered. “You keep saying you’re protecting me, but every time I try to breathe without your permission, you react like I’ve stabbed you in the back.”
He stared at her for a long, tense moment—so long that the air itself felt like it might shatter.
Then his shoulders dropped a fraction, some of the fury peeling away to reveal something worse: fear. Not the kind he ever showed anyone, not the kind that flinched from bullets or knives. This was older. Deeper.
“You don’t get it,” he said finally, and his voice wasn’t a growl now. It was raw. “You walk into danger like you were born in it, because you were. Because Navarro’s house was a battlefield wrapped in silk. But I remember another version of you. The one I watched from a cage while my own blood soaked the floor. The little girl who never saw the monsters in her father’s basement.”
Aria’s breath hitched. She shook her head once, sharply, as if she could dislodge the image. “That girl is gone.”
“No,” he said roughly. “She isn’t. She’s right here.” His gaze dropped for a second, tracing the line of her throat, the faint scar where the collar used to sit, the pulse fluttering wildly beneath his eyes. “Every time you walk into a room full of wolves and bare your teeth, I see her. The version of you that never chose this world. And I—”
He broke off, jaw clenching again like he’d almost admitted too much.
“You what?” she pushed, heart pounding. “Say it.”
He let out a shuddering breath, so close his exhale brushed her cheek. “I can’t lose you,” he said, voice so soft she almost didn’t hear it. “Not to them. Not to your father’s ghosts. Not because you’re too stubborn to ask for backup when someone writes your name in blood on an elevator wall.”
Her chest tightened, anger folding in on itself. “You think I’m not afraid?” she whispered. “I am. All the time. But I am more afraid of going back to who I was before. The girl who watched and did nothing. The girl who let men like Navarro decide which lives mattered.”
“You are not her anymore,” he said.
“Then let me prove it,” she insisted, tears burning behind her eyes, furious that he was seeing them. “Let me fight beside you. Not behind you. Not under you. Beside you.”
His fingers curled into fists against the glass, knuckles whitening. For a second she thought he would shout again, bark orders, tell her how stupid she was being. Instead, his head dropped forward until his forehead almost touched hers, stopping a hair’s breadth away.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking,” he murmured.
“I think I do,” she said, voice barely a breath. “You’re the one who doesn’t.”
His eyes lifted to hers again, and whatever she saw there stole the rest of her argument.
Terror.
Not of the Syndicate. Not of war. Of her answer.
“Damian,” she whispered, hand lifting without permission. Her fingers brushed his jaw, the rough scrape of stubble beneath her touch. He went rigid, like her palm was a blade instead of skin. For one suspended heartbeat, neither of them moved.
“You are not afraid of them,” she said quietly. “You are afraid of what happens to you if something happens to me.”
He didn’t deny it.
His eyes closed for a second, lashes dark against bruised skin. When he opened them again, they were softer and more dangerous all at once.
“You faced two men who wanted you dead and didn’t flinch,” he said. “You walked into their circle and looked them in the eye. You spoke like you belonged there more than they did.” His throat bobbed. “You terrify me, Aria.”
“Why?” she breathed.
“Because I’ve spent my entire life willing to die for nothing,” he answered. “Now, for the first time, I’m willing to die for someone—and she keeps walking into bullets.”
Her hand slid from his jaw to his neck, resting over the rapid thrum of his pulse. She could feel it racing under her palm, betraying every calm word he tried to craft.
“I didn’t ask you to die for me,” she said.
“I know,” he replied. “That’s the problem.”
Silence dropped over them like a thick curtain. The city glowed through the glass behind her, a thousand lights watching, unaware that in this office, the axis of their underworld was tilting.
Damian’s hands slowly peeled away from the wall. For a second she thought he was stepping back, rebuilding the distance brick by brick. Instead, he moved one palm to her waist, fingers spreading over her hip like he was afraid she’d vanish if he didn’t anchor her there.
“Don’t do that again,” he said, voice rough. “Don’t walk into danger without telling me. Don’t give my enemies another chance to take you from me.”
Her breath caught. “Is that an order?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, then dragged back up to her eyes. “No,” he said, and the word was a surrender. “It’s a plea.”
Aria’s chest ached.
For the first time, she saw the boy in the cage instead of the king behind the desk. The boy who’d watched her from the shadows. The boy who had learned that caring meant bleeding.
“I can’t promise I’ll never take risks,” she said honestly. “But I can promise I won’t take them alone.”
His grip tightened on her waist. “You stay beside me,” he murmured. “Not behind. Not in front. Beside. Or I tear this city apart until there’s nowhere left for our enemies to hide.”
Something in her loosened at that—something knotted up since the day he collared her and called her an asset.
“Beside you,” she echoed.
His lips hovered a breath from hers, the air between them electric, vibrating with everything they hadn’t said. She thought he might finally close the distance, might finally give in to the gravity pulling them together.
Instead, Damian tore himself back half a step, chest rising and falling hard, fingers leaving her waist like it hurt.
“If I touch you now,” he said hoarsely, “I won’t stop.”
Aria’s pulse thundered in her ears. “Maybe I don’t want you to stop.”
His eyes slammed shut for half a second, a muffled curse slipping out between his teeth. When he opened them, they were wrecked.
“Get out of my office,” he said, voice raw. “Before I decide I don’t care who’s watching.”
She held his gaze one heartbeat. Two. Then she slid past him, her shoulder brushing his arm. He shivered at the contact.
At the door, she paused, without turning around. “Damian?”
He exhaled, strained. “What.”
“I’m not your pet,” she said softly. “But I’m not leaving you alone in this war, either.”
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving him alone with cracked glass, scattered papers, and the knowledge that the thing he feared most had already happened.
He was in love with the girl he’d once sworn to destroy.