How Dare She?!

Kane's POV

The fluorescent lights overhead were blinding—clinical and cold. Like the ones above an operating table, they stripped me bare, dissecting my rage under their sterile glare.

My pen tapped against the folder in an erratic rhythm that mirrored the storm inside my head.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Aria.

Her name was a thorn jammed in my throat—too deep to cough up, too jagged to swallow.

"Fuck."

I muttered it for what felt like the hundredth time tonight, dragging my eyes back to the reports in front of me. Numbers. Names. Words.

But all I saw was her face.

That subtle lift of her lips when she was feeling defiant. The tight line of her mouth when she was pissed off.

And worse—the way she looked at me that day, like she'd rather die than let me touch her.

Those memories sliced through me like shards of glass, tearing through my veins, each one cutting deeper than the last.

CRACK.

The pen flew from my hand and exploded against the wall, ink bleeding across the wallpaper like a wound.

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