LOGINHe did not put her down.
Not in the corridor, not at the service exit, not when he got into the car. She lay against his chest the whole drive, her head on his shoulder, his jacket around her, and he held her with one arm and his other hand moved slowly through her hair and the city moved past the windows in the dark.She cried quietly for most of it. Small and soundless against him. His jaw stayed set and his eyes stayed forward and his hand never stopped moving through herHe lunged forward with explosive speed. He grabbed the heavy leather office chair with both hands and hurled it violently across the massive room. It smashed brutally into the far wall, splintering the expensive drywall and leaving a massive dent."Where is he." Damian screamed loudly. The sheer, unadulterated agony was tearing his vocal cords to absolute shreds. He spun around, slamming his bare fist directly into the solid marble edge of the desk. "Where is Marcus? I am going to kill him."The sickening sound of his knuckles fracturing echoed sharply in the quiet room. Damian did not even feel a single fraction of the pain. He swung his other fist, punching the heavy wooden doorframe. He punched the wall. He violently destroyed his own hands as a full blown manic panic attack seized his massive frame."Damian. Stop." Sebastian barked loudly, rushing forward across the carpet."I am going to rip his head off." Damian shrieked blindly. Tears of absolute, terminal horror streamed heavi
Damian’s large hands clamped forcefully onto the hard edge of the marble desk. His knuckles instantly turned bone white under the pressure. The blood roaring in his ears suddenly grew deafening."And the encrypted phone." Sebastian interrogated."We cloned her SIM card." Marcus sobbed pitifully on the recording. "We sent the messages from a remote server to make it look exactly like she was communicating with a corporate spy. The server passcodes. I pulled them directly from your physical safe when you were out of the building. I planted the digital breadcrumbs in the system, and I brought you the file.""Who paid you?""Cassandra." Marcus screamed in pure terror. "His ex wife. She was the one who actually provided the massive amounts of untraceable cash to hire my digital contractors. She hates Aria. She wanted her destroyed."Sebastian reached out and tapped the screen, pausing the video instantly. With a quick, practiced swipe of his thumb, he pulled up the secondary files. Pages a
The luxury suite at the Cross corporate hotel was suffocatingly quiet. The only sound in the massive, sterile space was the faint, rhythmic ticking of the heavy designer clock mounted on the far wall.Damian stood rigidly behind the massive marble desk. His dark, bloodshot eyes were fixed blindly on the glowing screen of his open laptop. He had been staring at the exact same quarterly financial report for the last forty five minutes without actually processing a single word or number. He was functioning entirely on a dark, hollow autopilot. He was using the cold, mechanical routine of corporate acquisitions and margin calculations to keep the devastating void inside his chest firmly locked shut. He had not slept in days. He had not felt anything resembling human emotion since the morning Sebastian had dragged him off the ruined floor of his penthouse.The heavy double doors of the suite suddenly clicked open.Damian did not even look up from the screen. "I explicitly told the lobby se
"We cloned her SIM card." Marcus confessed loudly, completely breaking under the terrifying threat of another bullet tearing through his body. "We sent treasonous messages from a remote server to make it look like she was communicating with a corporate spy. The server passcodes. I pulled them directly from Damian’s physical safe when he was out of the office. I had all the override codes. I planted the digital breadcrumbs in the system, and I brought him the file." The sheer, devastating magnitude of the betrayal hung heavily in the bloody, metallic air. Sebastian stood perfectly still. His finger rested lightly on the trigger guard. He thought of Damian, sitting in the absolute dark of his ruined penthouse, bleeding from his knuckles and drinking himself to death over a woman who was entirely innocent. He thought of Aria Hale, falling to her knees in scattered broken glass, desperately begging the man she loved to believe her. "Who paid you," Sebastian asked, his voice dropping int
Sebastian stared at him in absolute silence for three full seconds. Then, he simply stood up straight and snapped his fingers in the air.From the dense shadows behind the hanging light, Mateo stepped forward. The second in command walked up to the steel chair and tossed a thick, heavy manila envelope directly onto Marcus’s lap. It landed with a dull, heavy thud against his thighs.Sebastian nodded toward the brown paper envelope. "Do you recognize your own handiwork, Marcus."Marcus stared down at the package. He did not need to open the clasp to see what was inside. He knew exactly what those pages contained. His heart began to hammer violently against his ribs. A cold, sickly sweat broke out across his forehead and the back of his neck. He forced his eyes up, meeting the terrifying amber stare of his captor."I do not know what you are talking about," Marcus lied smoothly, keeping his voice as steady as humanly possible. "Those are the security files I presented to Mr. Cross last m
The air inside the abandoned shipping container tasted like rust and damp concrete.Marcus Li drifted out of unconsciousness with a sharp, involuntary gasp. His head throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic pulse, the memory of a sudden, blunt-force impact to the back of his skull flashing behind his eyes. He tried to reach up to rub the pain away, but his arms didn't move.A heavy, metallic clink echoed through the dark.Marcus blinked rapidly, his vision swimming as his eyes adjusted to the low, harsh glare of a single industrial work light dangling from the ceiling. He was sitting in a heavy steel chair. His wrists were zip-tied tightly to the metal armrests, his ankles secured to the front legs.Panic instantly spiked his heart rate. He was the head of corporate security for Cross Industries. He was supposed to be untouchable. He violently yanked his arms, the thick plastic biting deeply into his skin."I wouldn't do that," a deep, smooth voice drifted out of the pitch-black shadows be
Undress.Her hands lifted. They felt heavy. Clumsy. Like they belonged to someone else.She grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head in one quick motion. Didn't let herself think about it. Just did it.The fabric caught on her hair. She had to yank it free.She stood there holding h
The clock on the wall read 11:47 PM when Aria heard it.The elevator.Her head lifted from where it rested against her knees. She'd been sitting by the window for hours, maybe longer. Time had stopped meaning much after the first week.The mechanical hum grew louder as it climbed toward the penthou
"I haven't talked to him! He called Cassandra, not me.""He called her because he knows you're unreachable. He’s trying to find a crack in the wall." Damian leaned down, his face inches from hers. "He thinks you're a damsel he can rescue from a basement. He thinks your silence is an invitation to tr
“You’re bleeding,” he said.Aria looked down at her thumb. The blood had smeared against the white envelope. “It’s just a paper cut.”“You’re distracted.” Damian walked toward her, his presence invading the room until the air felt thin. He stopped inches from her, his heat radiating through her clot







