Chapter Two: Eyes Like Fire

Damian Vale had not looked up from the city in nearly an hour.

The world was smaller, quieter, obedient — exactly the way he liked it — from his vantage point. But today, somehow, quiet irritated him.

Or, rather, *someone.* 

Aria Morgan.

He was still able to hear the cadence of her voice echoing in his mind, even and serene when her hands trembled so infinitesimally at the start of her words. Most men cracked under the stress of this boardroom. She didn't. She stood there — back straight, chin raised — and informed him how to construct an empire that had been founded on brutality humane.

It had been bold. Anger-inducing. Engrossing.

Damian exhaled slowly, drumming fingers on the glass desk top. Her words reverberated: "Emotion sells more than strategy."

Ridiculous and he couldn't get away from the memory of how he'd sensed something stirring when she'd said it. Something dangerously like believing.

He pressed the intercom button. "Fetch me her file."

His assistant appeared in minutes — efficient, competent, worried. "Miss Morgan's background, sir."

He scanned the file: thirty-two, proprietor of a boutique marketing agency called Ember & Co. Graduate of a top-tier mid-tier university, no trust fund, no family ties. Self-made. Her business had been bleeding money for months. She was in a bind — but she hadn't seemed to be.

"Book a follow-up," he ordered.

"Yes, Mr. Vale. Tomorrow morning?"

"No," Damian answered after a pause. "Tonight. Dinner."

The assistant hesitated. "Personal or business?"

Damian's eyes raised, piercing as a knife. "You will discover with me that those boundaries are seldom defined."

---

Aria sat at her desk across the city, gazing at the silent phone.

Tomorrow. He'd promised tomorrow. What if tomorrow arrived bearing rejection?

She'd begun writing out her thank-you email before the call.

"Miss Morgan?"

The voice was abrupt. "Mr. Vale would like to take dinner with you tonight. Seven o'clock. The Skyline Room, Armitage."

Her heart stuttered. "Dinner? To discuss the proposal?"

"I wasn't given details," the assistant said politely. "Only that it's required."

Required.

Aria hung up, staring at the wall of her tiny office. Her staff — two young designers and one harried accountant — stared at her in expectant silence.

"Well?" her assistant, Lila, asked.

Aria let out a breath. "So I have dinner with the devil."

---

The Skyline Room was a gem nestled at the top of the city — a glass-wrapped private dining room whose view made even power seem humble.

Aria arrived early, her heart pounding, her face shining in the windows that reached the floor. The hostess escorted her to a table occupied by one man, jacket off, sleeves up, as if power came in a sportswear label.

"Miss Morgan." Damian's voice wrapped around her name like a whisper. "You came."

"I was told it was necessary," she said, trying to smile.

He gestured to the chair across from him. "Required doesn't have to be bad."

“I’ll reserve judgment.”

That earned her the smallest ghost of a smirk.

Dinner was—unexpectedly human. No boardroom masks, no entourage, just Damian and a bottle of dark red wine. He asked about her work, her ambitions, her thoughts on why people buy dreams disguised as products. He listened—really listened—eyes intent, absorbing every word.

But there was always that quiet hum under the surface. Power. Restraint. Danger.

“Why marketing?” he asked at last.

"Because human beings crave tales," Aria said. "They do not buy what you sell. They buy what they *feel*."

He leaned forward, eyes locked on the city lights, turning almost liquid. "You think emotion can save a business?"

"I think emotion can save *anything*," she said, her voice gentler now. "Even people."

For a moment, there was silence between them, stretched tight.

Something shifted in his gaze — from curiosity to something heavier, almost intimate. The city glowed behind him, but it was his eyes that burned.

“Careful, Miss Morgan,” Damian murmured. “I don’t save easily.”

“Then maybe you’re not the one who needs saving,” she whispered back.

His expression didn’t change, but the air between them thickened.

It wasn't romance at that point. Not even flirtation. It was the lightning that exists between two storms when they catch sight of one another.

After dinner, Damian rose. "You'll have my decision in the morning," he said. Then, after a pause, "But I already know what it will be."

Her throat was constricted. "And what's that?

He stepped closer, close enough that his cologne and the city lights tangled in the air. “Yes,” he said simply. “You’ll work for me.”

She blinked. “That’s it? No negotiation, no follow-up meeting?”

Damian’s lips curved faintly. “Consider this dinner… our first.”

Aria froze. “First of what?”

His smile deepened, unreadable. “We’ll see.”

He wheeled around to depart, she at the window, the cityscape aglow behind her — heart racing, skin flushed, one thought cycling in her mind:

She'd just entered something much bigger than a deal.