Aria didn’t realize how long she had been working.
Time in Wolfe Tower didn’t pass normally; it clawed at her until she couldn’t tell if minutes or hours were bleeding through her fingers.
Rina had dumped another stack of binders onto her desk with a cold smirk, informing her that Damian wanted every page sorted, scanned, logged, and coded manually—no digital shortcuts allowed because “assets don’t get convenience.”
Aria’s wrists ached from lifting the endless files, her eyes burned from reading tiny print under sterile lighting, and her throat felt scraped raw each time she swallowed.
Around midnight, the collar tightened without warning and delivered a harsh sting across her nerves.
It shocked her again when she slowed down, and again when she dared to stretch her cramping fingers.
Every time she hesitated even a breath too long, the device reminded her she wasn’t a human being in Wolfe Tower; she was property.
Rina passed her desk once, high heels tapping with sharp authority. “If you’re too weak for this place,” she said softly, “you won’t last long enough for Damian to bother discarding you.”
Aria didn’t answer. She was too afraid of what the collar might do if she tried speaking.
By 2 a.m., her vision blurred.
By 3 a.m., her knees collapsed beneath her.
She crumpled in the hallway, papers scattering around her like fallen feathers. She tried to push herself up, but her arms trembled violently, her palms slipping against the cold floor. The collar sent a soft warning vibration—almost mocking her, as though it wanted her to stand but knew she wasn’t capable.
Then the hallway darkened.
She hadn’t heard footsteps, she only felt the shadow. She didn’t dare look up until a hand clamped onto her arm and hauled her upright with unforgiving force.
“What the hell are you doing on the floor?” Damian’s voice cracked through the silence like a bullet. His grip tightened, pulling her closer so he could glare directly into her fading eyes. “Did I give you permission to collapse?”
His anger struck her harder than the collar ever could. Aria shook uncontrollably, lips parting uselessly as she tried to form words. Her chest was too tight. Her breaths came in sharp, broken gasps.
“I— I can’t— breathe…” she managed to whisper.
Damian froze. Not because he pitied her. He didn’t. He wasn’t capable of softness.
He froze because something wasn’t right.
Aria’s eyes were glassy, unfocused.
Her skin was flushed with fever. Her hands trembled as if she couldn’t even feel the ground beneath her. Damian’s jaw worked furiously, but he didn’t release her. Instead, his free hand lifted and pressed to her cheek.
The touch wasn’t gentle—it was testing, assessing, searching the way a soldier checks a wound after battle.
Her skin was burning beneath his gloved palm.
His expression shifted—barely, but enough.
He straightened sharply, cursing under his breath. Without another word, he swept his arm under her knees and lifted her. Aria gasped, shocked by the sudden closeness, her head falling against his shoulder as her body gave up the last bit of strength it had been clinging to.
She felt weightless and humiliated in equal measure. Her cheek brushed the fabric of his shirt—expensive, freshly ironed, smelling faintly of cedar smoke and something darker she couldn’t name.
Damian carried her through the hall with long, furious strides, his jaw locked in a way that told her every step was a war inside him.
No one dared look directly at them. No one interfered. No one asked questions.
He didn’t stop until he pushed through a secure steel door that led into his private penthouse—a room she had never been allowed to see.
It was spacious and cold, all black marble and glass, a kingdom of sharp edges and silence. He set her down on his bed—dark sheets, crisp and untouched—before yanking off his jacket and tossing it aside.
“Dammit, Aria,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair in raw irritation. He didn’t look at her with affection. He looked at her like she was a problem he hadn’t calculated correctly. “You’re supposed to follow instructions, not collapse in the hall like a corpse someone forgot to drag away.”
Aria couldn’t respond. Her breathing was still shallow. Her vision spun.
She felt her body sinking into the mattress, bones heavy, skin cold and hot at once.
Damian turned on a lamp, its dim light bathing the room in gold shadows. He rolled up his sleeves to his elbows—veins visible, muscles taut, movements precise and increasingly agitated.
He retrieved a bowl of ice water, wet a cloth, and pressed it to her burning forehead. The contrast made her gasp. Then he tilted her chin, forcing her to drink water from a glass he held against her lips.
Her eyes fluttered. She drank greedily, water spilling down her chin, but Damian didn’t pull the glass away. He watched her with a fury she didn’t understand—anger, yes, but threaded with something else. Something he didn’t want to name.
“You don’t get to collapse,” he muttered as he switched out the cloth for a colder one. “You don’t get to break unless I break you. Do you understand?”
She was half-conscious, barely hearing him.
Her fingers clutched weakly at his sleeve. She didn’t mean to. It was instinct, fear, fever, desperation. Her voice came out as a soft, trembling whimper. “Don’t… leave me…”
Damian’s entire body went still.
His hand, which had been adjusting the cloth on her forehead, froze mid-motion. His breath caught—not audibly, but in the sharp tightening of his chest. He looked down at her trembling, feverish form, at her glassy eyes begging for something he wouldn’t give.
For a moment—a single, dangerous heartbeat—his expression cracked.
His hand hovered over her cheek, close enough to feel the heat of her skin, close enough to touch but refusing to bridge the distance. His face blurred between hatred and something rawer. Something real. Something he suffocated instantly.
Just one stroke. Just one moment. One moment where he could have brushed her cheek and soothed her. One moment where the man he used to be clawed beneath the monster he had become.
Then he jerked back as if burned.
His jaw hardened. His fists clenched at his sides. His breathing sharpened like he’d been caught doing something forbidden.
He stood over her like a statue carved from rage and denial.
“I don’t care if you die,” Damian whispered. The words broke from him like a confession he forced through clenched teeth. He stared at her with a hatred so intense it trembled. “I don’t.”