The first thing I notice is how quiet the garage is.
Too quiet.
No engines humming. No boots echoing. Just the soft click of my heels against concrete and the distant buzz of a faulty light somewhere in the shadows. Wolfe Tower’s underground level usually feels like a fortress. Tonight it feels like a trap.
I wrap my arms around myself and tell my pulse to calm down. It doesn’t listen.
“Jaxon?” I call out, glancing over my shoulder. “You sure they’re meeting you down here?”
His voice still echoes in my memory from minutes ago: Wait by the car. Don’t move. I’ll grab the files and be right back.
That was ten minutes ago.
I swallow. The air feels thick, heavy with exhaust and something else—something metallic, stale, like old blood no one bothered to scrub all the way out of the cement.
My boots crunch over something.
I look down.
A spent shell casing rolls near the tip of my shoe.
My heart drops.
“Jaxon?” My voice comes out thinner this time.
Nothing answers.
The lights flicker once, twice. One of the rows goes out completely, plunging half the garage into darkness. I take a step back, pulse pounding in my throat. That’s when I hear it.
Footsteps.
Not Jaxon’s—heavier, slower, deliberate.
“Damian?” I try, hating the tremor in my voice.
A shadow separates from the darkness between two pillars.
Not Damian.
A man steps into the weak light. Black jacket, dark eyes, a smirk that doesn’t belong to anyone on Wolfe payroll. His gaze drags over my collar, then lower. The hunger in it makes my stomach roll.
“Navarro’s girl,” he says, like he’s greeting a prize. “Got you alone after all.”
Every instinct in me screams run.
Instead, I force my voice steady. “You shouldn’t be here. This garage is locked down—”
“Not to Serpent Circle,” he cuts in, smile widening. “You’d be surprised what fear buys us. Codes. Schedules. Names.”
He starts walking toward me.
I step back.
He keeps coming.
“Guards!” I shout, even though I know it’s useless. “Security!”
“Nobody’s coming, princess.” His tone is almost gentle. “They’re busy upstairs. Bomb threat on the third floor. Fake, of course. But it pulled all the eyes away from you.”
My blood turns to ice.
They didn’t just get lucky.
This was planned.
“Damian will kill you,” I manage.
He chuckles. “Maybe. But the Circle pays very well for your head. Or… parts of you first. Depends who wins the bidding.”
Fear tastes like iron in my mouth.
I feel for the small weapon Damian insisted I carry after the last ambush. My fingers brush cold metal under my jacket. The man’s eyes narrow, catching the movement.
“Ah.” He tilts his head. “He taught you to fight?”
“Yes,” I say, and this time my voice doesn’t shake. “He did.”
He lunges.
I yank the gun free just as he slams me into a nearby pillar. Pain explodes across my shoulder blades. The gun slips in my sweaty palm, clattering to the floor and skidding under the car next to us.
No.
His hand closes around my throat, squeezing just enough to make the edges of my vision fuzz.
“Cute toy,” he murmurs. “Not fast enough.”
I dig my nails into his wrist, knee snapping up toward his groin like Damian drilled into me a hundred times on the mat. He blocks with his thigh, but I still catch enough to make his breath hitch. His grip loosens.
I twist, slipping under his arm, lungs burning as air rushes back into my chest. My fingers scramble along the floor, reaching under the car.
There.
Cold metal.
I grab the gun.
“Back away!” I shout, spinning, hands shaking so hard the barrel glints.
The infiltrator wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes glinting with something like amusement. “You won’t pull that trigger.”
“You don’t know me,” I say.
He takes one slow, deliberate step closer. “I know your type. Rich girl. Locked in towers. Always someone else to do the dirty work. You want me gone?” He spreads his arms. “Shoot.”
My finger tightens on the trigger.
He moves faster than thought.
His hand goes for his own gun. A blur of metal. Muscle memory kicks in before my brain does—Damian’s voice in every nerve: Don’t wait, Aria. Hesitation gets you killed.
I don’t hesitate.
I fire.
The sound detonates in the confined space, deafening. Recoil slams up my arms. For a second, nothing feels real.
Then the infiltrator stares at me with wide, stunned eyes.
A red bloom spreads across his chest.
He drops to his knees, then collapses face-first on the concrete with a dull, final thud.
Silence crashes down.
The gun slips from my hand.
I’m shaking so hard my teeth chatter. The smell hits me next—fresh blood, sharp and coppery, mixing with exhaust fumes. My stomach lurches. I press a fist to my mouth, forcing myself not to throw up.
He would have killed you, I tell myself. He would have.
My knees threaten to give out, but somehow I stay standing. The world narrows to the body at my feet, to the single dark hole in his chest, to the echo of my own gunshot still ringing in my skull.
“I killed him,” I whisper to nobody. To the concrete. To the ghosts. To my father, wherever his ashes ended up. “I killed him.”
“Aria!”
Damian’s voice rips through the garage like a bullet.
I flinch so hard it hurts.
He appears at the end of the row, breath ragged, shirt half-open, gun in hand, Jaxon right at his back. His eyes land on the body first, then on me, then on the weapon on the floor.
For one terrifying second, Damian’s face is unreadable.
Then he’s moving.
He closes the distance in a blur. Jaxon peels off to check the perimeter, but I can’t look away from Damian. From the storm in his eyes. From the way his hand trembles around the gun.
“What happened?” he snaps, voice raw. “Did he—are you hurt?”
“I…” My throat locks. “He—he was Serpent Circle. He—he tried to—”
The words tangle. My lungs feel like they’re shutting down. My vision swims.
“I shot him,” I choke out. “He went for his gun and I—Damian, I—”
My knees finally buckle.
He drops his own weapon and catches me before I hit the ground.
His hands are on my arms, my shoulders, my face, everywhere at once, checking, searching. “Did he touch you?” he demands, voice shredded. “Did he hurt you? Tell me where.”
I shake my head, tears blurring everything. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I just—he was going to kill me and I didn’t think, I just—”
“Aria.” His tone cuts through my spiral like a blade. “Look at me.”
I drag my gaze up.
His eyes are burning, but not with anger. Something else. Something fierce and unbearable.
He cups my face in both hands, fingers digging in just enough to anchor me.
“I’m proud of you,” he says.
The world jolts.
“What?” My voice cracks.
“You listened.” His thumb brushes a tear from my cheek. “You didn’t freeze. You survived. I am proud of you.”
Something inside me snaps.
All the fear, all the adrenaline, all the memories of cages and collars and Navarro’s cold lectures about strength—it all crashes over me at once. I break.
I sob.
Not pretty, not controlled—ugly, raw, shaking sobs that wrack my whole body. I grip the front of Damian’s shirt like it’s the only solid thing left in the universe, burying my face against his chest.
“I didn’t want to,” I cry. “I didn’t want to kill anyone, I just—he was going to—he was going to—”
“I know.” His voice drops, low and rough against my hair. “I know, Aria. You did what you had to do.”
“I thought I’d freeze,” I rasp. “I thought I’d die. But I pulled the trigger and I—”
His hand finds the back of my head, pulling me closer, letting me shake against him. I feel his heart slamming under my ear, a wild, frantic rhythm that matches mine.
“You’re alive,” he murmurs. “That’s all that matters.”
He presses his lips to my forehead.
The kiss is nothing like his usual brutality. It’s soft. Lingering. So gentle it hurts more than any roughness ever could. He kisses my forehead, then my temple, then the wet tracks on my cheeks.
“You’re okay,” he keeps saying, like a mantra. “You’re okay. You did good. You’re okay.”
My fingers loosen in his shirt. Slowly, the sobs turn into broken little gasps, then into shivers. The body on the floor is still there, but the edges of it blur. The only things in focus are his hands, his voice, his mouth.
He tips my chin up and kisses the corner of my mouth.
I freeze.
His breath fans over my lips. His eyes search mine, asking a question he doesn’t dare speak. I answer by swaying closer, by clutching the back of his neck like I did in every nightmare where he didn’t arrive in time.
He kisses me.
It’s desperate and slow at the same time, like he’s afraid I’ll shatter and also terrified I’ll disappear. His mouth moves over mine, coaxing rather than taking, but the intensity behind it makes my knees threaten to give out again.
Jaxon’s voice echoes from somewhere distant. “We’re clear. I’ll handle the body.”
Damian doesn’t look away from me.
He lifts me easily, one arm under my knees, the other cradling my back. I tuck my face into his neck, breathing in sweat and gunpowder and him. My hands won’t stop shaking.
“Take the cameras offline,” he orders over his shoulder. His voice is Damian Wolfe’s again—cold, lethal. “Nobody sees this footage. Nobody touches this scene but you.”
“Got it,” Jaxon says.
The next thing I know, we’re in the elevator. The doors slide shut. It’s just us and the echo of my first kill trapped in the metal box.
Damian sets me down gently, but his hands don’t leave my body. One stays on my waist, the other on the side of my neck, thumb brushing the edge of the collar.
“Breathe,” he says.
“I am,” I whisper. “I think.”
His eyes soften in a way that still feels dangerous. “You’re shaking.”
“So are you.”
A humorless huff leaves his mouth. “I almost lost you again. That… does things to a man, Aria.”
The elevator hums. My body hums with it. With fear. With adrenaline. With the memory of blood on concrete and his voice saying I’m proud of you.
When the doors open on his floor, he doesn’t let me walk.
He carries me into the penthouse, kicks the door shut, and only then sets me down—on his bed, not the couch, not a chair, like there was never any other option.
“Damian—”
“I need to see you,” he mutters, voice hoarse. “Need to know you’re still here. Still warm. Still—”
Alive.
The word hangs between us, unspoken and deafening.
His fingers trace my jaw, my throat, my shoulders, as if mapping me all over again. Every touch grounds me a little more, pulls me farther from the image of the man falling in the garage and closer to this—this feverish, fragile moment where we’re just two people who almost didn’t make it.
“Look at me,” he says again, softer.
I do.
There’s no hatred in his eyes now. No cold calculation. Just wildfire and something terrifyingly close to reverence.
“I thought I’d be sick,” I confess, voice trembling. “After. I thought I’d drown in guilt.”
“And?” His thumb sweeps under my eye.
“I’m… relieved,” I whisper. “Relieved I’m not dead on that floor.”
His jaw tightens. “You don’t have to be ashamed of wanting to live, Aria.”
I swallow. “I don’t want to feel alone with it.”
“You’re not.”
He kisses me again.
Slower this time. Deeper. The world narrows to the heat of his mouth, the tremble in his hands, the way his body shakes when I slide my fingers into his hair. The fear leaking out of me turns into something else—still sharp, still urgent, but now threaded with need.
We move together like we’re both trying to prove something—that we’re here, that we survived, that the shadows didn’t win. His touches are rough in places, tender in others, like he can’t decide whether to worship me or hold me hard enough to leave marks.
By the time he lays me back on the bed and follows me down, my heart isn’t racing from fear anymore.
It’s racing because this is Damian, and he’s looking at me like I’m the only real thing in a world built on lies.
“Aria,” he breathes, forehead pressed to mine. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”
“Then show me,” I whisper.
He does.
Later—after the storm of hands and mouths and whispered curses, after the shaking and the gasping and the way we cling to each other like the city outside might disappear—we lie tangled in the sheets, skin damp, breaths uneven.
His arm bands around my waist, holding me against his chest. Every so often he presses a kiss to my hairline, like he’s checking I’m still there.
I stare at the ceiling and listen to his heartbeat. Heavy. Human. Real.
I killed a man tonight.
And I’m still here.
So is he.
We’re both destroyed and somehow more alive than we’ve ever been.
That thought terrifies me.
It also makes me curl closer into him, fingers fisting in his shirtless chest, clinging to the one monster who taught me how to survive—and who, somehow, has become the only place I feel safe.