Chapter 4

Amara’s POV

The office after hours had a pulse of its own.

By day it was a machine, phones ringing, heels clicking on polished floors, printers spitting out reports while assistants ran themselves breathless. But at night? At night it was something else. Empty, too quiet, with the kind of silence that pressed against your ears until every hum, every flicker of fluorescent light, every sigh of the air vents felt magnified.

Most people hated staying this late, but I craved it. Nights were my sanctuary. No eyes. No voices. No Damien Cole’s gaze following me like I was a puzzle he couldn’t decide whether to solve or destroy.

At night, it was just me, my screen, and the slow, methodical weaving of a plan that had been in motion for years. Revenge doesn’t keep to business hours, it demands obsession.

I hunched over my laptop, the glow from the monitor painting my skin pale as I typed projections, shifting columns of numbers until they blurred together. Numbers were easier than people. Numbers behaved. They didn’t leer. They didn’t lie.

My fingers moved automatically, my mind elsewhere, on the pieces of this empire, on the gaps where leverage could slide in unnoticed. I was so deep in it that at first I thought I imagined the sound.

Footsteps.

I froze, my heart skittering.

Not the lazy shuffle of the night janitor. Not the heavy, dragging walk of security guards who hated their jobs. No, this was sharp. A rhythm of intent. Heel to tile, steady, deliberate, almost predatory.

Every instinct screamed at me before I even turned.

Kingston.

The smell of his cologne hit first, cloying, expensive, trying too hard. Then his voice, smooth with the whiskey he always thought hid on his breath.

“Well, well. Look at you.”

I schooled my features into polite surprise, though my stomach twisted.

“Mr. Kingston,” I said, voice calm, neutral, professional. Always professional. “I was just finishing up.”

He rounded my desk and leaned against it like he owned the air I breathed, his tie loose, shirt collar open. His smile was all teeth, slick with entitlement.

“New girl burning the midnight oil,” he drawled, his eyes roaming too openly. “Trying to impress someone?”

I made myself meet his gaze. Steady. Cold. “Just catching up on numbers. That’s all.”

He chuckled, low and knowing, leaning closer until his cologne stung the back of my throat. “Ambition looks good on you. But you know…” He tapped a finger on my desk, his hand too close to mine. “Around here, numbers aren’t the only thing that gets you noticed.”

There it was. The mask slipped, revealing what he really wanted.

My jaw tightened, but I smiled, thin, polite. “I should finish this,” I said, pushing my chair back subtly, creating space.

But Kingston didn’t move. His hand brushed against the edge of my desk, lingering like a dare. His voice lowered, too intimate, too certain.

“You’ve got potential, Amara. Don’t waste it by playing hard to get.”

My pulse quickened, but outwardly I remained carved in marble. This wasn’t new. I’d dealt with men like him before, men who thought their power made them irresistible, men who mistook survival for invitation.

Still, the walls inside me rattled. The room felt smaller. The air is thicker.

“Mr. Kingston,” I said, each word precise, cutting. “I appreciate your… concern. But I’m quite capable of getting noticed through my work.”

For a heartbeat, his smile faltered, but then it returned, sharper. “Work doesn’t always open doors. Sometimes, it’s who you… impress.” His gaze dropped, deliberate, disgusting.

I felt heat crawl up my throat, but I forced stillness. He wanted a reaction. He fed on discomfort. And damn him, he wasn’t going to win.

Then…

“Is there a problem here?”

The voice sliced through the air, low and lethal.

I stiffened. My breath caught.

Damien.

He stood at the far end of the corridor, framed by the city lights bleeding through the glass wall behind him. His tie was loosened, his suit jacket undone, but there was nothing casual about the way he stood. His presence filled the space, every line of him sharp and unyielding, his gaze fixed on Kingston like a predator that had just spotted prey.

Kingston straightened so fast I almost laughed. The whiskey glow drained from his cheeks, replaced by a pallor I’d never seen.

“No problem, sir,” Kingston stammered. “Just discussing projections.”

“Projections,” Damien repeated, his voice flat, dangerous in its restraint. He took a step closer, then another, each stride echoing. My heart hammered with every step. “Interesting. Because what I saw looked nothing like work.”

Kingston swallowed. I could see the sweat gathering at his temple. “You misunderstood…”

“Get out.”

Two words. Quiet. Final.

There was no raised voice, no dramatic threat. Damien didn’t need theatrics. Power lived in his stillness, in the ice of his gaze.

Kingston hesitated, his eyes darting to me like I might save him. I gave him nothing. Finally, muttering excuses, he backed away, his footsteps retreating fast, almost tripping in his haste.

Silence fell again. Heavy.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, my shoulders sagging for a fraction of a second before I forced myself upright again. Armor. Always armor.

But I felt it. The weight of Damien’s gaze on me.

I turned, slowly, and met it.

He didn’t look at me the way Kingston had. There was no hunger, no assumption. But his stare was no less intense, if anything, it was worse. He looked at me like he saw through me, as if my carefully constructed walls were made of glass.

“You shouldn’t be here this late,” he said, voice low, softer now but still edged.

Neither should you, I wanted to snap. Neither should you, with your shadows and your secrets and the ruin you left in your wake.

But the words tangled in my throat, strangled by something I refused to name.

Instead, I whispered, “I can handle myself.”

For a long, terrible moment, he said nothing. Just studied me, his jaw tense, his eyes unreadable. And then, barely his gaze softened.

“You shouldn’t have to.”

The words struck harder than Kingston’s touch ever could. They slipped past my armor, carving straight into the hollow I’d spent years protecting.

I hated that they mattered. Hated that they lingered.

But they did.

When Damien finally turned and walked away, leaving me with the fading echo of his presence, I sat frozen, staring at the glow of my laptop screen without seeing a single number.

You shouldn’t have to.

The man I swore to destroy had just made me feel something I thought I buried years ago.

Safe.

And that terrified me more than Kingston ever could.

Damien’s POV

The office at night was my refuge.

No interruptions. No calls. Just the city below, restless, never sleeping. I came here when the weight of everything pressed too close. Silence was easier than faces.

But tonight, silence betrayed me.

Kingston’s voice carried down the hall, too smooth, too amused. I knew that tone. I’d heard it before, tucked into whispers, hidden in HR files that never made it to my desk.

The sound of a man crossing lines.

When I turned the corner and saw him leaning over Amara’s desk, saw her body held tight as a bowstring, saw the steel in her eyes that didn’t quite mask the tension in her shoulders, something in me went still.

I didn’t think so. I acted.

And when Kingston fled, when the corridor fell into silence, it wasn’t him I couldn’t stop watching.

It was her.

Amara Vance.

She sat bathed in the glow of her laptop, her lips pressed tight, her eyes bright with a thousand things she wouldn’t say. She looked unbreakable. But I’d seen the flicker beneath, the moment her shoulders dropped when Kingston left. The tiny exhale that betrayed her exhaustion.

And it hit me harder than it should have.

“You shouldn’t be here this late,” I said, though what I meant was I shouldn’t want to keep her safe.

She bristled immediately. “I can handle myself.”

Of course she said that. Strong. Defiant. She wanted me to believe she was untouchable. But I had seen enough men like Kingston to know the truth.

“You shouldn’t have to,” I said quietly.

And in that moment, the truth startled me.

I wasn’t supposed to care. Caring was my weakness. A liability.

But standing there, watching her, the thought lodged itself in me like a blade.

I already did.

Amara sat in the quiet after he left, her fingers trembling against the keys she hadn’t touched in minutes. The numbers on her screen blurred into nothing.

She had come here for revenge. For destruction. For the ruin of Damien Cole.

But tonight, as his voice lingered in her chest like an echo she couldn’t ch

ase away, one terrifying thought clawed its way in.

What if the man she needed to hate… was the only one capable of protecting her?

And worse, what if she wanted him to?