The morning after the rooftop felt wrong from the moment Aria opened her eyes.
The sky over Manhattan was pale and clean through the narrow slit of her window, but everything inside Wolfe Tower hummed with a tension she could feel in her bones. She tugged the collar at her throat out of habit, feeling its faint vibration, and listened. No footsteps outside her door. No clipped orders through the intercom. No low, rough voice telling her where to be, what to do, how to breathe.
Damian Wolfe was avoiding her.
She only realized how much space he usually occupied when he wasn’t there. Meetings still happened. Phones still rang. Rina still dumped files on her desk with icy precision. But the air felt hollow, like the building itself was holding its breath. Aria watched the glass office across the floor. The blinds were half-closed. His shadow passed by the window a few times—fast, sharp, restless.
Every time it did, someone got fired.
By noon, two security chiefs had been walked out of Wolfe Tower, faces pale, belongings shoved into boxes they hadn’t packed themselves. Someone whispered that Damian had called them “incompetent liabilities.” Someone else claimed he’d thrown a chair. Aria caught fragments of his voice through glass and marble—snarled orders, curses, the crack of something hitting a wall—but he never called her name.
He didn’t look at her once.
She worked in silence, fingers stiff over keyboards and paper, heart too loud in her ears. Every report she formatted, every file she scanned, she felt last night pressed up against her skin. The way his voice had fractured on the rooftop when he talked about the cages. The way his eyes had looked when she touched his chest and he didn’t flinch away. The way he’d said she deserved better and sounded like he meant it more for her than himself.
Now he was a storm behind glass and she was expected to pretend the sky was clear.
By the time the sun sank and the city lit up in bruised gold and electric blue, Aria’s nerves were frayed to threads. Rina slid a thick folder onto her desk without bothering to sit.
“These go to him,” Rina said. “Tonight. Signed, flagged, and ready.”
Aria’s throat tightened. “Can’t someone else—”
“Someone else,” Rina cut in, arching a brow, “doesn’t wear his collar.”
It was almost midnight when Aria finally stood outside Damian’s office, folder clutched in both hands, collar warm against her pulse. The executive floor was almost empty now, lights dimmed, footsteps replaced by distant hums of elevators and security systems. She took a breath, lifted her hand, and knocked.
“Enter,” his voice snapped through the speaker, rougher than usual, frayed at the edges.
She pushed the door open.
He was standing behind his desk, sleeves rolled to his forearms, tie discarded, top two buttons of his shirt undone. Papers were scattered across the table like they had lost a war. A half-empty tumbler sat beside his laptop. His knuckles were bruised again. His eyes, when they lifted to her, were dark, sharp, and furious.
She stepped inside carefully, closing the door behind her. “Rina sent the updated contracts and security reports. She said you’d want them tonight.”
She barely finished the sentence before he moved.
Damian crossed the space between them in three long strides, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her fully into the room. The folder slipped from her hands, pages fanning out across the floor like fallen cards. Her back hit the closed door with a dull thud. His arm braced beside her head, caging her in place.
“What did I tell you about coming here alone at night?” he demanded, voice low and lethal.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “I was ordered to bring—”
“I don’t care what anyone ordered,” he snapped, leaning closer. “You do not walk around this tower like you’re invincible. You do not wander into my office when every man in this building is questioning how far they can push me. You don’t get to get into my head and then act surprised when it’s not safe there.”
Anger flared through her fear. “I didn’t come here to get into your head,” she shot back. “You keep dragging me into it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“You blame me for everything you feel,” Aria said, voice shaking but steady. “You lock me down, collar me, chain me to your side, and then get furious when your own walls start cracking. You think I asked to see the boy Navarro broke. You think I wanted to be the one you talk to on rooftops about scars no one else knows exist?”
Damian’s jaw clenched, muscle jumping. “Don’t talk like you understand me.”
“I understand that you’re terrified,” she whispered. “Not of them. Not of the Syndicate. Of yourself.”
His hand slammed flat against the door beside her head, the sound echoing through the office. He leaned in until their faces hovered inches apart, breath mingling, the heat of him soaking into her skin.
“Careful,” he said, voice rough. “You have no idea what I’ll do if you keep pushing.”
Her chest rose and fell too quickly. “Then stop pulling me.”
He laughed once—a broken, humorless sound. “You think I can?” he asked. “You think I don’t hear your footsteps outside my office and have to count backward from ten just to keep from opening the door? You think I don’t remember every word you said on that rooftop every time I close my eyes?”
His hand lifted before he could stop it, fingers wrapping around the chain at her collar, pulling just enough to bring her closer. The cool metal scraped against the back of her neck. Her breath caught. His free hand slid to her hip, fingers digging into the curve like he needed something solid to hold onto.
“You are inside my head every second,” Damian said, each word dragged out like it hurt. “You are in every thought I don’t want to have. You are in every weakness I swore I wouldn’t carry. You don’t get to stand here and tell me I’m the one dragging you in when you’re the one who walked onto that roof and put your hand on my chest like I was—” He cut himself off, jaw locking.
“Like you were human,” she finished quietly.
His eyes burned.
He tilted her chin up with his fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze. The collar hummed faintly between them. His thumb brushed the edge of her jaw in a touch that felt like an accident and a confession all at once. His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered, darkened.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?” she breathed.
“Like I’m something you could want.”
Her pulse stumbled. “Maybe you are.”
Silence slammed between them, heavy and electric. For a heartbeat, the tower, the Syndicate, the blood on his hands—all of it vanished. There was only the door at her back, his body barely not touching hers, his breath shaking as he fought with something bigger than rage.
He stepped even closer, closing the last sliver of distance so that his chest brushed hers, their bodies lining up in a way that felt too right for two people who were supposed to be enemies. His nose skimmed the side of hers. His lips hovered a breath away. Aria’s hands, trapped between them, curled in the fabric of his shirt.
“You have no idea,” he whispered, voice raw, “what I’ll do if you keep pushing me.”
A tremor ran through her. “Then show me.”
His entire body went rigid.
Her words hung between them, soft and lethal.
Damian’s eyes slammed shut for a second, as if the force of wanting was physically painful. His fingers tightened on her hip, digging into her skin through the thin fabric. The collar warmed against her throat, reminding them both of the chain between them, of the power imbalance, of everything about this that was wrong.
And still, the craving roared louder.
He opened his eyes again, and she saw it clear this time—the war, the hunger, the terror of both. His mouth was a fraction of an inch from hers, close enough that she could feel each shaky exhale against her lips, close enough that if either of them leaned the smallest bit forward, there would be no going back.
Damian didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
Hating how much he wanted to. Hating that hatred was no longer enough to drown the ache.
He stayed there instead, trapped in the space between self-control and surrender, between the life he’d built on vengeance and the future he could ruin with one reckless kiss.
And Aria, breathing his air, feeling his heartbeat hammer against her ribs through his chest, finally understood:
She wasn’t the only one standing on an edge anymore.