The scream tore through Wolfe Tower just past midnight.
High, sharp, desperate.
Aria froze where she stood in Damian’s office doorway. Papers slipped from her hands. The guards outside sprinted toward the elevators, guns drawn. Damian’s head snapped up from the table, every muscle in his body locking with a predator’s instinct.
“What was that?” Aria whispered, voice thin.
Damian didn’t answer.
He was already gone—storming down the hall with a speed that made the air shiver behind him. Aria followed before her fear could stop her. She caught up only when the guards halted abruptly, blocking the entrance to the executive elevator.
Then she saw it.
A body lay sprawled inside the glass elevator.
One of Damian’s own employees—a man she’d seen handing out reports earlier that week. His throat was carved open so deeply she could see bone. Blood soaked the metal tiles in thick, tar-black pools.
And next to him—
A message.
Written in the victim’s blood.
ARIA.
The room spun around her. Legends said Wolfe Tower was impenetrable. No outsider could breach the upper floors. But someone had. Someone had walked into the inner sanctum of the most dangerous man in Manhattan and left a corpse with her name carved beside it.
Aria staggered backward, hand covering her mouth.
Damian didn’t blink.
He stepped inside the elevator, boots slicing through blood. His jaw tightened, his eyes deadening into something cold and lethal. He looked at the body, then at the message, then at Aria.
Something cracked.
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t visible.
But she felt it—the moment Damian’s control splintered into something wild.
“Lock every floor,” he said, voice low enough to chill bone. “Shut down every exit. Anyone who touches the stairwells dies.”
Jaxon rushed forward. “Damian, we need to follow protocol—”
“Protocol,” Damian repeated softly, dangerously. “Protocol didn’t stop this.”
He knelt beside the body. Aria’s name stared back at him in dripping red strokes. His fingers curled into fists.
“This is on me,” he whispered. “My mistake. My failure.”
Aria shook her head. “Damian, I—”
“Not. One. Word.”
He stood so fast the guards flinched. Then he turned on Jaxon with an expression that could melt steel.
“Find who did this,” Damian ordered. “Find the cameras. The blind spots. The badge logs. The service tunnels. I want every second of footage analyzed.”
Jaxon hesitated. “Damian, the men are saying—”
The rest of the sentence never came.
Damian slammed Jaxon into the wall with a force that shook the glass.
“They’re saying WHAT?” he hissed.
Jaxon didn’t fight. He just looked at him with something pained in his eyes. “They’re saying you’re slipping. That she—” His gaze flicked to Aria. “—is making you reckless.”
Aria’s stomach dropped.
Damian let Jaxon go slowly, shaking with barely suppressed violence. His voice came out a snarl.
“If any of them think touching her will fix this—if any of them think coming near her will make me stronger—they’re welcome to try.”
He didn’t shout.
He didn’t need to.
Every guard stepped back.
Damian turned toward Aria then, and the room shrank around her as he stalked closer. His eyes swept her like a scanner—checking for cuts, bruises, blood. She felt the fear rolling off him in waves disguised as fury.
He grabbed her wrist.
“Dam—”
He yanked her forward, forcing her two steps behind him.
“From now on,” he growled, “you don’t leave my shadow. Not my floor. Not my sight.”
Aria tried to pull back. “Damian, I don’t want—”
He spun on her so fast she stumbled.
“You don’t get to want.”
His voice shook. Not with anger. With something far more terrifying.
Aria swallowed. “I’m not safe with you when you’re like this.”
Damian’s eyes darkened. “You’re not safe with anyone BUT me.”
The elevator body was still bleeding on the floor. Guards whispered. Fear rippled like electricity through the air. Aria knew every gaze in the room was calculating her worth—how much trouble she caused, how much blood she cost.
And she saw something else too.
Damian was unraveling.
Pieces of the man held together by trauma and violence were beginning to fall apart.
Because of her.
He dragged her down the hall, ignoring the stares, the murmurs, the thinly veiled panic from executives watching their king come undone. Aria tried again.
“Damian, this isn’t rational—”
He shoved her into a corner of the hallway, palm braced beside her head. His chest rose and fell sharply. His breath shook.
“Rational?” he rasped. “Rational was leaving you on the lower floors with guards. Rational was giving you back to the Syndicate. Rational was letting you die the night you ran.”
Aria stared into his eyes.
The man in front of her was not rational.
He was breaking.
And he was breaking for her.
“I won’t apologize for keeping you alive,” he said, voice raw. “Not when the world wants your corpse on display.”
A tear slid down Aria’s cheek. “But they’re dying because of me.”
Damian’s throat worked. His hand rose slowly—hesitantly—before he brushed her tear away with his thumb.
“You didn’t carve your name in that man’s blood.”
“But—”
“THEY DID.”
His voice thundered down the hall. Guards stiffened.
Damian leaned closer until his forehead almost pressed to hers.
“They’re trying to bait me,” he whispered. “To use you to pull me apart.”
“Is it working?” Aria whispered.
Damian closed his eyes.
A long, agonizing pause.
“Yes,” he breathed. “And they’re going to regret it.”
Without warning, he grabbed her hips, pulling her flush against him—not sexual, not possessive. Instinctual. Protective. Terrified.
People were watching.
People saw.
Guards whispered.
Executives stared.
And Damian didn’t care.
“Two steps behind me,” he demanded. “Everywhere I go. If you wander, if you hide, if you breathe without me knowing—I swear to God, Aria, I’ll tear this city apart.”
Aria’s breath shook. “Damian…”
He stepped away only enough to look her fully in the eye.
“You will stay alive,” he said. “Even if it destroys me.”
And Aria realized with a cold shock—
It already was.