Timothy

Daniel’s POV

When my phone lit up with Aria’s name, I honestly thought I was imagining it.

I’d been staring at screens for too long—maps, reports, timelines that refused to make sense no matter how many times I reviewed them. Sleep had stopped being a priority days ago. Coffee tasted like nothing. Every vibration of my phone had trained my body to brace for bad news.

But when I saw her name, there was no hesitation.

No second-guessing. No moment where I stared at the screen and debated what the right response would be.

The moment I saw Aria, my fingers moved on instinct.

Hi, sweetheart.

I sent it before I could stop myself, before I could think about whether it was too familiar or too much. The word had always come naturally with her. It still did. And the fact that she didn’t immediately push back—didn’t tell me not to call her that—loosened something tight in my chest.

Answering her was easy. Everything I didn’t say was not.

I wanted to tell her I’d missed her. That the house felt wrong without her in it. That I still caught myself turning toward the empty side of the bed, still listening for her voice in quiet rooms, still waking up some nights with her name already on my lips.

I wanted to ask if she was sleeping, if she was eating well, if the nausea had eased. If she felt safe. If she was scared.

I didn’t say any of it.

She had asked for space. And I wasn’t going to turn her reaching out into another reason for her to pull away.

The urge to get up, grab my keys, and drive straight to her was almost unbearable. It took real effort to stay where I was, to keep my hands still, to remind myself that showing up uninvited would only confirm every fear she had about me being overwhelming.

She hadn’t disappeared. She hadn’t shut the door. And that was enough for now.

When her next message came through, something in my chest eased further. It wasn’t much—just a simple follow-up—but it told me she was still there and still willing to talk.

I leaned back in my chair and exhaled slowly, pressing my thumb against the edge of the desk.

I still had other questions I wanted to ask. Too many of them.

Do you miss me?

Do you think about me?

Do you still think about us at all?

Is there any chance for us?

I asked none of them.

Right now, that wasn’t what she needed. It would only push her further away from me.

So I let her move the conversation forward because I couldn’t ask my questions. I let her set the pace while I followed her lead. While I waited, nothing else slowed down.

While I kept talking with her, the stress from weeks left my shoulders, even if only for a moment, but still, the problem remained.

Nothing had surfaced. Not a whisper or a rumor.

There was no talk on the street about Kane. No one was trying to revive his old network. There were no desperate middlemen we didn’t kill sniffing around for contracts that had been dead for years. Every channel we checked came back empty.

That kind of silence wasn’t comforting. It made the hair at the back of my neck stand.

Then Henrik called yesterday.

His vacation house—remote, isolated, supposedly secure—had blown up overnight. The explosion had been powerful enough to level half the structure. A gas explosion, they said, but we knew that wasn’t true.

If his children hadn’t left two hours earlier, we would’ve been talking about funerals.

Theo. Jonah. Me. Marcus. Now Henrik.

This really wasn’t random. The only problem was finding out where all of this was coming from so we could tackle it before there were more problems.

My men also later reported that the explosion at the bunker was not as they told us. They didn’t want to say anything in front of the men. Maybe Marcus was correct to say there might be a mole amongst us.

I immediately doubled the security at Susan’s house after the call from Henrik.

Alessandra had gone back to her kingdom after she sent a message that her brother needed to see her for something important, so I didn’t have to worry about her.

Tessa didn’t take it well when I said she couldn’t go out without security.

She never did when she thought I was controlling her.

She accused me of monitoring her again. Of tracking her movements. Of trying to keep her away from Ethan. She thought it was about jealousy, or punishment, or my inability to let go.

We fought.

I didn’t want to tell her. I’d spent years trying to keep the worst parts of my life away from her. She’d grown up with a version of me that worked too much and traveled too often—not one who planned for violence.

But I didn’t have a choice anymore. So I told her enough.

Enough that her face drained of color. Enough that she stopped arguing. Enough that she remembered there was a time—years ago—when she couldn’t go to school without guards.

She knew enough of that life to understand what this meant.

After that, she cooperated. She let my men drive her. Stayed within range and didn’t try to run off.

She was reasonable—not because she liked it, but because this time, the danger wasn’t abstract.

It involved her life.

My phone buzzed again.

Aria.

My attention snapped back instantly. Her messages were careful. Like she was feeling her way forward one step at a time.

I matched her pace.

I didn’t tell her about the stalker. Or the fact that every instinct in me was screaming that staying away from her was the hardest thing I’d done in years.

I let the conversation stay light and normal.

Part of me was grateful she wasn’t here—grateful I could focus, that I wasn’t constantly torn between protecting her and figuring out the anger hovering around us.

And another part of me hated that thought. Because the truth was simple.

No matter how much I held back.

No matter how quiet I stayed.

No matter how careful I was—

Everything I was doing was still for her.

And until this was over, loving her meant staying exactly where I was.