The Syndicate’s emergency session felt like a battlefield disguised in velvet and marble. Twelve family heads sat around the obsidian table, their expressions carved from cruelty and centuries of blood-papered tradition. The moment Damian entered, silence hit the room like a dropped guillotine. Aria stood just outside the doorway, out of sight but close enough to hear every venomous word.
Whispers were already swirling.
Wolfe is compromised.
The Navarro girl has him by the throat.
He’s slipping.
A gravel-voiced patriarch finally said what the room had been waiting to spit.
“Wolfe. If you expect us to continue following you, we need proof you’re still one of us. Prove you haven’t gone soft.”
His gaze slid toward the door—toward Aria.
“Hand the girl over.”
Damian’s jaw flexed once. “No.”
The table erupted—voices rising, chairs scraping, fists slamming. A woman from the eastern family narrowed her eyes.
“Then give her to us for questioning. Or punishment. Whichever reveals the truth faster.”
Jaxon moved before thinking—a step forward, hand inching toward his holster. A gun clicked behind him. Another followed. In seconds, weapons pointed at his heart.
Damian’s rage exploded.
He slammed both palms onto the table so hard the obsidian cracked. “Point another weapon at my men,” he growled, voice low and lethal, “and I will turn this entire council into a graveyard.”
Silence dropped, thick and suffocating.
A younger boss smirked. “Then prove you’re not letting Navarro’s little doll get inside your head.” His gaze was poisonous. “Interrogate her. Here. In front of us.”
The air froze.
Aria, listening from the shadows, felt her heartbeat stop.
Damian’s chest rose once. Twice. His fury morphed into something colder—strategic. Terrifying.
“Fine,” he said. “But I’ll interrogate her myself.”
The room hummed with satisfaction. Approval. A sick anticipation.
“Tomorrow morning,” the patriarch declared. “And Wolfe… it better be thorough.”
As the meeting dismissed, Damian didn’t look toward the door—and Aria didn’t need to see his face to know something inside him had snapped.
***
She found him hours later in his office, staring out the glass wall as if Manhattan had personally betrayed him. The city lights painted him in jagged gold and shadow. When she stepped inside, he didn’t turn. Not immediately.
“You heard.”
Not a question. A sentence. A death sentence.
Aria’s voice shook. “I did.”
Damian finally turned, eyes colder than she’d ever seen. “Then you know what tomorrow requires.”
Something inside her broke.
“You’re going to interrogate me,” she whispered. “For them.”
His jaw tightened. “I’m going to protect you the only way they’ll allow.”
“By humiliating me?” Her words cracked like brittle glass. “By treating me like your prisoner—your object—your—”
“Enough.” Damian’s voice was a blade. “If I don’t do this, they will take you. They will tear you apart. They will—”
“You think that makes this better?” Aria shouted, tears blurring her vision. “You think that excuses what you’re choosing to do to me?”
Damian closed the distance in two strides, fury radiating off him. “I am choosing to keep you alive,” he hissed, eyes burning. “Even if it means they hate me. Even if you hate me.”
She flinched.
Damian sucked in a breath like the impact hit him physically.
Aria’s voice trembled—not with fear, but with devastation. “I do hate you.”
Something shattered in Damian’s gaze—quiet, raw, dangerous.
“Aria—”
“No.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “I hate you more than I ever hated my father.”
Damian went utterly still. Not breathing. Not blinking. Just… breaking.
No one had ever said words that could wound him. No one had ever touched the parts of him that still bled.
But Aria just had.
He forced his expression back into stone, but the crack ran through it, visible and undeniable.
“Get out,” he whispered.
Aria stumbled backward.
Damian didn’t look away from the window. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
The only sign he’d heard her at all was the faintest tremor in his hand—barely there, but devastating in its existence.
And for the first time, Aria realized: Hurting him hurt her, too.