Back at Wolfe Tower, the silence in the private elevator felt louder than gunfire.
Aria stood rigid in front of the mirrored doors, black silk clinging to her like a bruise, Damian’s reflection towering behind her—tie loosened, jaw clenched, eyes darker than the city outside. The moment the doors slid open on the penthouse floor, she stepped out fast, needing distance, needing air, needing anything that wasn’t him and his chaos.
He followed.
The door to his office shut with a dull, heavy thud. Aria spun around before he could speak, words bursting out of her like shrapnel.
“You humiliated me.”
Damian stopped mid-stride.
She pointed at him, at the suit still neat despite the blood on his knuckles, at the man every boss in the city feared. “You slammed a man into a pillar in front of the entire Syndicate because he looked at me. You dragged me through that circus like I was some kind of prize. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
“Yes,” Damian said, voice deceptively calm. “Safe.”
She laughed—sharp, disbelieving. “Safe? You call that safe? I was on display. Every man in that room wanted to own me or kill me or use me, and you held me like—”
“Like no one else could touch you,” he snapped, stepping closer, eyes flashing. “Like no one else dared.”
“You’re not a hero, Damian,” Aria bit out. “You’re not my guardian. You’re just another predator with a different leash.”
Something in his eyes went glacial.
He moved before she could step back.
His hand shot out, fingers wrapping around the chain attached to the ring at the front of her collar. He gave it a hard, deliberate tug. The metal links slid tight, pulling her forward, dragging her into his chest. Her breath caught, hands flying up to press against him for balance, palms landing against the heat of his body beneath expensive fabric.
“Careful,” he murmured, the word a threat and a warning all at once. “You don’t get to talk about leashes when you have no idea what those men are capable of.”
Her heart pounded against her ribs. “I know exactly what you’re capable of.”
He leaned in, chain still wrapped in his fist, their faces far too close. “No,” Damian said softly, dangerously. “You really don’t.”
The office lights painted harsh lines over his cheekbones, over the ink curling along his neck, over the fury he wore like second skin. His grip on the chain tightened just enough to command, not choke. Just enough to remind her who held the end of it.
“I am nothing like them,” he whispered.
Aria’s pulse raced. “You kill. You control. You own. Tell me how that’s different.”
“The difference,” he said slowly, lowering his head until his breath brushed her lips, “is that when they touch, it’s always for power. For fear. For spectacle.”
His gaze dipped to her mouth, lingering there, hungry and furious and conflicted.
“If I ever touch you,” he went on, voice dropping to a rough, intimate rasp, “it won’t be for power.”
The air between them thickened, molten, too hot.
“It will be for something much worse.”
The words slid into her like heat and ice at once.
Her fingers curled in his shirt. She didn’t mean to. She didn’t want to. But her body reacted faster than her sense, dragging her closer by a breath. The scent of him—dark cologne, smoke, faint iron from fading blood—wrapped around her. Her lungs forgot how to work.
Something foreign sparked low in her belly, crawling under her skin—fear, yes, but tangled with something else. Something that felt disturbingly like want.
“I don’t—” she started, but the words died when she saw his eyes.
Damian Wolfe, the Devil of Manhattan, looked like a man at war with himself.
His throat worked around a swallowed curse. His hand slid from the chain to the curve of her waist, fingers splaying against the silk, digging in like he was trying to anchor himself in her instead of losing himself to her.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he muttered, the edge of desperation haloing the anger.
“Like what?” she breathed.
“Like I’m not the monster who ruined your life.”
Her voice dropped, barely there. “Because right now… you don’t feel like the worst thing that’s happened to me.”
His eyes flared.
The tension snapped taut—hate, heat, hunger twisting into a single, unbearable thread. He leaned in that last fraction of distance, so close his nose almost brushed hers. The collar hummed faintly against her skin, but she barely felt it. All she felt was him and the storm raging off him, the possibility of what would happen if he closed that distance and did the one thing they both knew would change everything.
His breath hitched.
Hers stopped.
For one impossible heartbeat, Damian looked like he might just give in.
Then he ripped away from her like he’d been electrocuted.
He dropped the chain as if it burned him. The links swung between them, clinking against the collar with a sharp, mocking sound. Damian stumbled back a step, hand dragging over his face, eyes wild with something that looked suspiciously like fear.
“Enough,” he barked, more at himself than at her.
Aria stood there, chest heaving, collar warm, lips tingling from a kiss that never happened. Shame and heat and confusion tangled inside her until she wasn’t sure if she wanted to scream at him or drag him back.
Damian turned his back to her and grabbed the phone on his desk, voice sharp, cracking at the edges.
“Jaxon,” he said, not taking his eyes off the far wall, “get up here. Now.”
Static, then Jaxon’s muffled reply. “On my way, boss.”
Damian’s hand tightened around the receiver before he set it down. He still wouldn’t look at her.
“When he gets here,” Damian said, tone flat but strained, “he’s taking you back to your room.”
Aria swallowed. “I can walk myself.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “I’m not risking you bumping into another man while I still feel like this.”
“Like what?” she whispered.
He turned his head a fraction, profile sharp, eyes dark and haunted.
“Like I’m one second away from making a mistake I can’t take back.”
The door opened a moment later. Jaxon stepped in, eyes flicking between them, instantly reading the volatile air.
“Take her,” Damian ordered without looking away from the window now. “And Jaxon?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“If anyone touches her on the way,” he said quietly, “you shoot first.”
Aria’s heart stuttered at the casual violence—and at the truth buried under it.
He was protecting her from everyone.
Including himself.