Wolfe Tower had seen fear before. It had never seen this.
The alarm didn’t blare. Damian’s security systems were too refined for that. Instead, a silent protocol triggered—lights shifting, doors sealing, guards appearing in the halls like shadows with guns. Executives were herded into safe rooms. Elevators froze between designated floors. The whole building exhaled once and then held its breath.
Aria felt the change before anyone told her why.
She was at a side desk on the executive floor, halfway through scanning contracts, when two guards appeared at her shoulders—silent, armed, eyes harder than usual.
“On your feet,” one said.
She stood slowly. “What’s happening?”
“Move.”
The collar buzzed faintly against her throat—reacting to a new security mode. Aria’s pulse quickened as they marched her down the hall. Doors that were usually open were now sealed. Employees whispered in tight clusters, phones hidden in shaking hands. The energy was not confusion.
It was fear. Damian’s fear.
They rounded the corner toward his office—and Aria stopped breathing. His door was ruined.
The sleek dark surface she’d seen every day was carved through with jagged letters, deep and vicious, like someone had taken a knife or a chisel to the wood and enjoyed every stroke.
BRING THE GIRL TO TRIBUTE NIGHT OR WE TAKE HER OURSELVES.
Her stomach dropped. Not girl. The girl. Her.
Damian stood in front of the door already, shirt sleeves rolled, tie discarded, rage burning through him so hot the air around him felt scorched. Jaxon and three other security leads flanked him, but no one dared stand too close.
“Who breached my floor?” Damian’s voice was quiet, dangerous, his gaze fixed on the words like he wanted to rip them out of the wood with his bare hands.
“We’re sweeping the feeds,” Jaxon said grimly. “Whoever did it knew the blind spots. They weren’t amateurs.”
Damian’s jaw clenched. “Find them.”
“We will—”
“Not eventually,” he snapped, finally turning his head, eyes blazing. “Now, Jaxon.”
Jaxon gave a curt nod and moved away, barking orders into his earpiece. Guards fanned out, boots thudding against the marble.
Damian’s gaze shifted.
Landed on Aria.
The moment he saw her, something in his shoulders eased and tightened at the same time, like her presence was the only thing proving the threat hadn’t already been carried out.
“Inside,” he ordered.
The damaged door slid open on command, panel overrides bypassing cosmetic ruin. A second door—steel, hidden beneath—unlocked from the inside with a solid thud. He ushered her in with a hand at the small of her back, the touch searing through the thin fabric of her blouse.
“What is—” she started.
“Silence.”
His office sealed behind them with an ominous hiss, shutting out the armed chaos outside. The skyline glowed beyond the glass, indifferent as always, but the room itself felt smaller, the shadows thicker.
Damian turned on her fully now.
“You don’t leave this room,” he said. “Not for anything. Not until I say so.”
Aria’s heart hammered. “Do you think this is from my father’s enemies… or yours?”
His laugh was humorless. “At this point?” He stepped closer, eyes dark. “Does it matter? Navarro’s rivals, mine, Syndicate traditionalists—every single one of them sees you as currency. A trade piece. A message. A toy for Tribute Night, if they’re feeling nostalgic.”
She shivered. “I’m not… I’m not a message. Or a toy.”
“No,” Damian said. “You’re bait.”
Her breath left her chest in a rush. “Then maybe I shouldn’t be here at all. Maybe I—”
“You are not walking out of this building,” he growled. “You wouldn’t make it past the lobby.”
“I didn’t say without protection—”
“You don’t get protection outside of me,” he snapped.
The words hung in the air, heavy and too honest.
Something in her broke.
“You can’t lock me in a room and pretend that’s safety, Damian,” she whispered. “You can’t be everywhere. You can’t stop every person who wants to hurt me. You can’t control every angle. I don’t need a cage. I need—”
“Don’t tell me what you need.”
Anger flared in his eyes, hot and vicious. He closed the distance between them in three long strides.
“Tribute Night is blood sport dressed in diamonds,” he said. “Do you have any idea what they do there? What they wantto do to you? What they think they’re entitled to, because of what your father did for them?”
“I’m not him,” she said again, voice shaking. “You know that. You said you know that.”
“And they don’t care.” He stepped so close she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. “They don’t see you as a person. They see you as penance. As a treat. As a way to humiliate me and resurrect Navarro’s ghost in the same breath.”
Her hands curled into fists. “I still don’t need you guarding me like some—”
The collar buzzed sharply, reacting to her raised voice.
Damian snapped.
His hand shot up, fingers wrapping around the metal band at her throat. Not tight enough to choke, but firm enough to drag her a step closer. Her breath caught, eyes widening.
“Listen very carefully,” he said, voice deadly calm and shaking all at once. “From this moment on, you don’t decide what you need. I do. You don’t decide what risks are acceptable. I do. You don’t decide when you’re safe, when you’re not, where you go, who sees you, who breathes near you.”
His grip on the collar tightened just enough to make her hyper-aware of the vulnerable skin beneath it, of the position he had her in—controlled, pinned between his hand and the weight of his fury.
“I will decide,” he continued, low and brutal, “what happens to your body. Your safety. Your future. Because the alternative is them deciding. And I promise you, Aria, you don’t want that.”
Her pulse thundered against his palm.
Fear dragged icy claws down her spine—but something else moved with it. Something hot. Something defiant.
She swallowed, eyes glistening. “You’re hurting me,” she whispered. “And you don’t even realize it.”
His jaw clenched. “I’m keeping you alive.”
“At what cost?” Her voice cracked, but she didn’t look away. “You’re not angry at me because I’m reckless, or because I don’t listen, or because of what my father did. You’re angry because you’re losing control. Of them. Of this building. Of yourself. Of me.”
His entire body went still.
The hand on her collar tightened for a fraction of a second—then froze. Shock flashed through his features first. Real, raw, almost human. Then terror. Then rage—cold, defensive, reflexive.
“Careful,” he said, but the word sounded strained, not sharp. “You’re walking into places you shouldn’t be.”
“You’re the one who dragged me here,” she whispered. “Into your tower. Into your war. Into your nightmares.”
His eyes flared.
“And now,” Aria continued softly, chest heaving, “you can’t tell where the hate ends and everything else begins. That’s what scares you.”
He let go. Not gently. Not violently.
Just… suddenly, as if his fingers had realized all at once what they were doing and recoiled on instinct. He stepped back, breathing hard, running a hand over his mouth like he could wipe away the truth she’d just thrown at him.
A knock sounded at the door. “Boss,” Jaxon’s muffled voice called. “We’ve isolated the breach point, and—”
“Out,” Damian snapped.
There was a pause. “We’re already—”
“I said EVERYONE out.” His voice boomed through the room, laced with a fury that had nothing to do with security protocol and everything to do with the crack she’d just carved into him. “No one comes in this office unless I call for you. No one.”
Silence, then footsteps retreating.
Damian stared at the floor for a long moment, chest rising and falling too fast, the carved message on the outer door burning like a brand behind his eyes.
BRING THE GIRL TO TRIBUTE NIGHT OR WE TAKE HER OURSELVES.
He looked up at Aria again.
Something in his gaze had changed.
The hate was still there, deep and ingrained. But now it had company—a wild, desperate, furious awareness he didn’t want and couldn’t unsee.
“Sit down,” he said finally, voice lower, rougher. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Aria sank into the nearest chair, legs unsteady.
He moved to his desk, turned off the outer feed display, and locked the inner system down with a few vicious keystrokes. He didn’t look at her again right away.
Because if he did, he knew she would see it. The thing he’d spent his whole life burying. The thing Navarro’s cages hadn’t managed to kill. The thing now reawakening, terrifying and unwanted, every time she said his name.
Control was slipping. And they both knew it.