登入He 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
Only then did he pull back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand—a rough drag that smeared her essence across his skin, the wet smack loud in the sudden quiet—his eyes gleaming in the dim light like a predator sated but not finished, pupils blown wide with his own restrained hunger. He climbed
The air in the archives felt heavier than usual on the morning of August 22nd. Aria sat at her desk, her neck stiff and her body aching with a exhaustion that sleep couldn’t touch. Every time she moved, the high collar of her blouse rubbed against the fresh bruise Damian had left the night before—a
“So fucking soft,” he growled, the words rumbling from his chest like thunder felt in her bones, nipping at the swell of her flesh hard enough to leave teeth marks that bloomed sharp and stinging, the pain lancing straight to her clit like a live wire. She arched into it, a desperate whine tearing f
The call came at 10:47 AM.Aria was in the B3 basement archives, her hands gray with dust from organizing a decade-old shipping manifest, when her phone buzzed against the metal desk. The screen glowed in the dim fluorescent light.Executive Office.She stared at it for three rings before answering.







