Damian didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t have to.
“Sit.”
The word snapped through the air the moment Aria stepped into his private office. The door slid shut behind her with a soft mechanical hiss, sealing her into a room that felt too large and too cold—stone, steel, floor-to-ceiling glass framing Manhattan like prey.
She hesitated for half a heartbeat.
The collar pulsed once at her throat, a warning she was learning to recognize.
Aria crossed the room and sat in the chair opposite his desk, her palms damp against her knees. Damian stood with his back to her at first, hands braced on the window, suit jacket off, white shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms. The skyline glowed around him, making his reflection in the glass look more shadow than man.
He watched the city like he was considering whether to burn it down again.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
His voice was quiet, patient in the way knives were patient when they waited on a table.
Aria swallowed. “Sabrina cornered me in the lounge. She—”
“Wrong answer.” He turned.
The full weight of his gaze hit her like a blow. Whatever thin thread of calm she’d gathered snapped under it.
“You’re here,” Damian said, walking around the desk, “because you’re reckless.”
She frowned, exhaustion stiffening her spine. “I didn’t do anything. She came to—”
“You engaged.” He stopped in front of her, towering, arms folded across his chest. “You let her get a reaction. You let her get close. You let her put her hands on you.”
His gaze flicked to the faint red line at her throat where Sabrina’s nail had grazed the skin by the collar.
Aria’s fingers twitched as if to cover it. She stopped herself.
“I tried to walk away,” she said, voice tight. “She followed. She threatened me. She talked about Tribute Night—”
“I know what she did,” he interrupted.
“Then why am I the one—”
“Because,” Damian snapped, control cracking just enough to show teeth, “you are the one who can’t afford mistakes.”
The words slammed into her, hot and unfair.
Her temper—small, hidden, usually buried under fear—flared. “So she gets to do what she wants, and I just stand there and take it?”
“Yes.”
The word was so blunt it knocked the breath from her chest.
Damian leaned down, planting his hands on the arms of her chair, caging her in without touching more than the leather. His face was close, eyes cold and sharp, his scent wrapping around her in a way that felt like another trap.
“You,” he said slowly, “do not talk back to Sabrina. You do not provoke Sabrina. You do not argue with Sabrina. You do not argue with anyone in this Tower unless I give you those words first.”
Her heart hammered. “You want me silent.”
“I want you alive.”
She stared at him, anger burning through the fear. “And if staying alive means letting everyone treat me like I’m nothing, I’m supposed to—what—smile and nod?”
“You’re not here to smile,” he said. “You’re here to obey.”
Something inside her reared up against that. It came out in her voice before she could stop it. “I have the right to defend myself.”
His eyes went flat.
“You have no rights,” he said.
The sentence was soft, precise, so calmly stated it almost didn’t sound cruel. That made it worse.
He straightened, every line of his body tightening. “You don’t seem to understand your position, so let me simplify it for you. You are not a guest. You are not a partner. You are not even an employee. You are an asset. Assets don’t defend themselves. They are defended or discarded.”
“And you’ll discard me if I don’t behave?” Her voice shook, but she forced the words out anyway. “Is that what this is?”
His jaw clenched. “Don’t test how far my patience stretches.”
“You’re the one dragging me into meetings. Letting me walk in public. Using me as a symbol. And now you’re angry that people notice and react?” Her eyes burned, but the tears didn’t fall. “What do you want from me, Damian?”
For a second, something like surprise flickered across his face—at the way she said his name, maybe, or at the fact she dared to look him in the eyes when she asked it.
Then the surprise was gone.
“What I want,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “is obedience.”
She didn’t see the small black remote at first. Not until he held it between two fingers, casual, like it meant nothing.
Fear dragged cold fingers down her spine. “What—”
“You seem to forget,” Damian murmured, tilting his head slightly, “what this is for.”
He pressed his thumb to a button.
The collar didn’t shock her.
It tightened.
Not physically—the band didn’t constrict like a hand closing—but the pressure of it bloomed from a pinpoint at the front of her throat, spreading in a slow wave of heat beneath her skin. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was worse. It was awareness. It was humiliation wrapped in circuitry and design, a hot, pulsing reminder that the metal at her throat answered to him, not her.
Aria gasped.
Her back arched against the chair, breath catching as the warmth built, not burning but intensely, horribly intimate. Her fingers flew to the collar, nails scraping uselessly over smooth metal.
“Stop—” The word came out ragged.
Damian watched her, expression half stone, half something she couldn’t name. “Protocol Thirteen includes compliance conditioning. Rina told you that, I’m sure. You disobey. I correct. You learn.”
Her knees started to tremble even though she was sitting. The heat moved like a slow, merciless hand around her neck, under her jaw, down the lines of her pulse. Her breathing broke into sharp, uneven gasps as her body tried to fight something it couldn’t escape.
“Please,” she whispered, hating the sound of it.
His eyes flicked to her mouth, then back to her throat, where the glowing band pulsed faint blue with her racing heartbeat.
He took a step closer.
He hated her like this.
He hated the way her breath stuttered. Hated the way her lashes fluttered as she fought to control herself. Hated most of all the way something in him reacted—to the helplessness, to the trust she didn’t mean to give, to the sound of his name fractured on her tongue.
His thumb hovered over the remote.
The device hummed softly, feeding her skin the heated command to yield.
Another broken gasp tore from her. Her hand slipped from the collar to the arm of the chair, fingers clawing for stability. If he didn’t stop it, she would slide to the floor.
Damian’s teeth clenched.
He pressed the button again.
The collar went still.
The heat, the pressure, the humiliating thrum of control—all of it faded, leaving her shaking and breathless in its wake. Sweat dotted her hairline. Her lips parted on a shivery inhale that sounded too close to a sob.
He moved without thinking, one hand bracing on the back of her chair, the other hovering a fraction of an inch from her shoulder as if he couldn’t decide whether to touch or not.
“If you want to survive this world,” he said quietly, words scraping out of him like they hurt, “you learn obedience. Fast.”
She lifted her head slowly.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, yes. Wet, yes. But behind the sheen of tears there was something else—anger, pride, a stubborn light that refused to go out.
“You think that makes me safer?” she managed, voice hoarse. “Being silent while people like Sabrina carve me up?”
“It keeps you breathing long enough for me to decide what to do with you,” he replied.
“That’s not survival,” she whispered. “That’s just… waiting.”
The room felt too small suddenly.
She looked at him like she could see through him, like she could see everything he was trying so hard not to be.
Something dangerous flickered in his chest, sharp and uninvited—a twist of guilt, of protectiveness, of something that lived too close to want. It crawled up his throat, trying to reshape his next words into something softer.
He crushed it.
Damian straightened abruptly and turned away, dropping the remote back into his pocket as if it burned.
“Get up,” he said, voice back to steel. “You’re not broken. There’s work to do.”
She pushed herself to her feet slowly, legs unsteady but holding. Her fingers brushed the collar, feeling the lingering warmth like a phantom hand around her throat.
At the door, she paused.
“You can make me obey,” Aria said, not looking back, “but you can’t make me stop seeing what you are.”
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
“Careful,” he murmured to the window, not trusting himself to face her. “You’re not built to play with the monster, Aria.”
Behind him, the lock clicked softly as the door opened.
Her answer floated back, quiet but clear.
“Maybe you’re not as much of a monster as you want me to believe.”
He heard her leave.
Damian stood alone in the silence, jaw clenched, collar remote heavy in his pocket, and the most terrifying part was the truth humming under her words:
He was not afraid of her disobedience. He was afraid of what it made him feel.