Chapter 6 — "The Card"

Damon gave her his card and she took it because that's what you do when a man like Damon Kincaid hands you something — you don't refuse. You don't make a scene. You close your fingers around the black rectangle like it's nothing, like it's just paper, like the heat that jumped between his skin and yours was static electricity and not something else entirely.

Now she's in the back of the sedan Haruko called for her, staring at it.

Black card. Silver lettering. No company logo — just his name and a phone number embossed in clean sans-serif. The cardstock is heavy, almost thick enough to be plastic, with a subtle texture like linen. She runs her thumb across the numbers. Once. Twice.

*Damon Kincaid. 555-0199.*

The sedan smells like synthetic leather and the driver's cheap cologne — something aquatic and sharp, the kind of scent that's trying to be the ocean and landing somewhere closer to swimming pool. She cracks the window. The December air cuts in, cold enough to sting, carrying exhaust and wet asphalt from the city streets.

She tucks the card into her coat pocket.

Then she takes it out again.

Then she puts it in her bag.

Then she slides it into the inner pocket of her blazer, against her ribs.

It's 11:47 PM when she gets home. The apartment is dark, small, functional — a one-bedroom in a building that's seen better decades. The radiator hisses and knocks. The refrigerator hums. She stands in the entryway for a long moment, still in her coat, looking at the dark living room like she's forgotten what it's supposed to feel like.

She hasn't slept here properly since she took the NovaTech contract. Most nights she crashes at the office. The bed feels too big. The silence feels too loud.

Her shoulder still tingles where he touched her.

She shrugs off her coat, hangs it on the hook, and *immediately* takes it down again to fish the card out of the inner pocket. She carries it to the kitchen, sets it on the counter next to her kettle. Puts the kettle on. The flame catches with a *whump* and the blue ring glows in the dark apartment.

The card sits there. Black. Silent. Unimpressed by her indecision.

She makes tea. Chamomile. The kind that's supposed to calm you down. She stands at the counter and drinks it while the card watches her from its spot next to the sugar bowl. The tea is hot. Her hands are cold. The kitchen smells like chamomile and old grease from the burner she never scrubbed properly.

*He touched my shoulder.*

She rinses the mug, sets it in the drying rack. The card is still there.

*He touched my shoulder and I didn't flinch.*

She picks it up again. The numbers are clear, deliberate, each digit perfectly aligned. He must have had these made in bulk — they're too clean to be a single custom run. But the way he handed it to her, the way his fingers lingered on the corner, the way he met her eyes and said *"I expect to hear from you"* — that wasn't rehearsed. That was him, unpracticed and intent, like he'd been waiting for a reason to give her that card all night.

She walks to the living room. Sits on the couch. The leather is cracked and cold. She doesn't turn on a lamp. The streetlight through the blinds paints yellow stripes across the floor.

The card is warm from her hand.

She stares at her phone on the coffee table. Black screen. Silent.

*Three years. Three years since I was Lila. Three years since I let anyone touch me. Three years since I let myself want anything except the next contract, the next deadline, the next wall to build higher.*

Her phone buzzes.

She doesn't move.

It buzzes again.

She picks it up.

**UNKNOWN NUMBER**

*It's Lucian. Please pick up.*

Her thumb hovers over the block button. She presses it. The notification disappears. The phone goes quiet.

She sets it down.

Stares at the card again.

Damon Kincaid's number is in her hand. The man who looked at her like he was cataloging her, measuring her, *wanting* something from her — and not the thing she was used to giving. He didn't look at her like she was an Omega. He didn't look at her like she was damaged goods. He looked at her like she was a problem he wanted to solve, and the way he said it — *"I have a problem I think you can solve"* — made her feel like the solution was the least interesting part of the transaction.

She imagines calling. Imagines his voice on the other end — low, unhurried, that slight gravel. Imagines what he'd say. What she'd say.

*"This is Aurelia Chen."*

*"I know who this is."*

And then what? What would follow that?

She doesn't know. And she *hates* not knowing.

The clock on her phone reads 1:23 AM. She should sleep. She has a meeting at nine with Haruko about the Q1 production targets. She has a prototype calibration at eleven. She has a life that doesn't include mysterious billionaires with gray eyes and cardstock that costs more per sheet than her weekly grocery budget.

She types the number into her phone.

Doesn't save the contact. Just... types it. Lets it sit there on the screen. 555-0199. Ten digits. One call away from finding out what happens next.

The cursor blinks.

She locks the phone.

Unlocks it.

The number is still there.

She looks at the card in her other hand — the black surface, the silver letters, the faint warmth of her own body heat trapped against the fibers. She thinks about the way his hand felt on her shoulder. The weight of it. The steadiness. The way it didn't pull away until *he* decided it was time.

*He touched me and I didn't flinch.*

*I didn't flinch.*

She sets the card on the coffee table, face-up, and goes to bed with her phone on the nightstand, the number still unsaved but memorized, burned into her brain like a brand.

Sleep doesn't come easy.

The ceiling has a water stain in the corner that looks like a map of somewhere she's never been. She traces it with her eyes. The radiator clanks. The wind scrapes a branch against her window. She counts the minutes by the glow of her phone as it marks the hours — 2:00, 2:30, 3:00.

At 3:47 AM, she picks up the phone.

She does not call.

But she pulls up the number again and lets her thumb rest on the green receiver icon. The screen casts her face in pale light. Her eyes look tired. She looks like someone who hasn't slept properly in three years.

The icon glows.

She presses it.

It rings once before she hangs up.

Her heart is pounding. Her hands are shaking. She stares at the ceiling and feels the phantom heat of his touch still burning through her shoulder, and she doesn't sleep for the rest of the night.

---

The next morning, there's a text from an unknown number.

**555-0199:** [10:14 AM] — *I'm at NovaTech. Third floor. Your assistant is making me coffee. She's very protective of you.*

Aurelia stares at the screen.

She hasn't called. She hasn't agreed to anything. And yet he's there, in her building, drinking her coffee, on her floor, in her territory.

Her chest does something complicated — tight and hot and terrified and thrilled.

She types: *I didn't agree to a meeting.*

His reply comes in under thirty seconds.

**555-0199:** [10:15 AM] — *No. But I knew you wouldn't sleep. And I wanted to see you.*

The phone feels too heavy in her hand. The word *see* stays on her screen, vivid and deliberate, and she knows — with the same certainty she knows how to read a circuit diagram or predict a structural failure — that he meant every letter.