Damian Wolfe
I'd built my world on leverage. On secrets. On always being ten moves ahead.
But with Aria, I was blindfolded, handcuffed, and walking willingly into the fire.
No more.
I crossed the room, opened the drawer beneath the whiskey cabinet, and pulled out the encrypted phone I hadn't touched in months. It hummed in my palm like a curse. This line wasn't for business. It wasn't for pleasure. It was for cleanup.
I dialed one number. No name. Just a symbol: a chess piece—The Bishop.
He answered on the third ring.
"I need eyes on Jasper Vale," I said without preamble. "Full surveillance. No gaps. I want to know who he talks to, where he goes, and what he's hiding from me."
"Understood."
I didn't hang up. Not yet. My voice dropped. "And Aria?"
A pause. Then: "What do you want us to do?"
What did I want?
To protect her? To break her? To drag her into the darkness where I lived and make her understand me?
"I want her safe," I said finally. "But I also want to know if she's the one holding the match."
I ended the call and stared out at the skyline again. The storm was coming and I wasn't going to let it drown me.
Not this time.
If Aria was going to betray me.
I'd be ready.
Even if it meant destroying the only person who ever made me feel like a man instead of a monster.
---
Aria Vale
The city was a blur outside the tinted car window—neon lights bleeding into one another, like the past and present smearing into something unrecognizable.
I wasn't the girl who stood in her father's shadow anymore. I wasn't the woman who walked into Damian Wolfe's tower thinking she could seduce her way to the truth.
No. I was something else now.
A reckoning.
The file Elena Ward gave me sat on the seat beside me. Redacted names. Offshore accounts. Monarch's reach wasn't just deep—it was ancient, political, surgical. And at the heart of it all… Wolfe Enterprises.
But there was something else too.
Buried deep in those documents—an incident. One erased from every major archive but preserved in whispers and code. My father's name wasn't the only signature on those files.
Damian's was there too.
And I didn't know if it meant he was complicit or trying to cover it up.
I reached for my phone and hovered over Jasper's contact. I couldn't trust him—not anymore. Not after the things he hadn't said. The silences between his warnings.
I slid the phone away.
This next part…I had to do alone.
I wasn't here to fall in love.
I wasn't here to be saved.
I was here to bury the empire that turned my father into a ghost and made me its legacy.
If Damian Wolfe was part of that monster—
Then I'd cut him out of me like rot.
But if he wasn't…
God help me, I might still burn for him anyway.
---
I had the driver take me to a discreet location—a private storage unit beneath an old textile factory, off the grid and off the record. This place was mine long before I met Damian Wolfe. Back when I first started digging into the mess my father left behind.
The keypad glowed beneath my fingers. I entered the code, and the steel door hissed open.
Inside, the walls were lined with corkboards and red string. Timelines. Transactions. Connections between shell corporations, dummy foundations, off-shore havens—all bleeding back to one nexus: Monarch.
And now, Wolfe.
I pulled out the new files Elena had given me and started pinning them up. This wasn't just corruption. This was systemic. Royal families, political dynasties, old money and newer blood—all under the same crownless empire.
I zoomed in on one name: Sebastian Ward. Elena's brother. Presumed dead. But if the whispers were true, he was the architect behind Monarch's black sector operations. And if Damian knew that…
If he protected him…
My chest tightened.
I scrawled a new word across the center of the board in sharp red ink:
EXTRACTION.
This was no longer about finding the truth. It was about exposing it.
Publicly. Brutally. Irrevocably.
I wasn't going to confront Damian in a tower or a bedroom.
I was going to drag his empire into the light
and force him to choose what side of the fire he wanted to burn on.
---
Damian Wolfe
I couldn't sleep.
The city stretched below like a wound that never healed—too many lights, too many secrets. My phone buzzed once on the table. A text from Jasper.
"It's Handled."
Two words that were supposed to reassure me. They didn't.
Because I knew something Jasper didn't. I'd planted false intel. A breadcrumb trail only someone with split loyalties would follow. And he had.
I ran a hand through my hair, gripping the back of my neck as if that could stop the growing sense of betrayal clawing up my spine.
If Jasper had lied to me, it meant Aria was slipping away too. That her eyes were somewhere else now—on ghosts, on vengeance, on some deeper truth her father buried in the bones of this city.
Monarch wasn't just a name. It was a kingdom. And I had inherited its rot without even knowing.
But now I knew.
And if she was coming for me, for the empire I didn't ask to inherit, then I had only one move left.
Not to run. Not to hide.
To go deeper.
To the root of it all.
And pull the whole damn thing out by the throat.
---
My phone buzzed once—no ID, no name. Only one person used this line. The Bishop.
I answered without a word.
A pause. Then: "It's done."
I didn't ask what. With him, there was always a what—and it was always precise.
"You were right," he continued, voice low and stripped of anything unnecessary. "Jasper's been moving under you. Subtle. Clean. But not clean enough."
The room chilled around me. I stood still, staring at the dark skyline like it could offer answers.
"How deep?" I asked.
"Deep enough to make you bleed if you don't act. He's been feeding intel to an unaffiliated cell—old Monarch hands, the ones your father purged. They're not ghosts. Not anymore."
I exhaled, slow. "Motives?"
"Unclear. Could be revenge. Could be a coup. Could be something messier."
My jaw clenched. "And Aria?"
Another pause. Longer this time. "He's been circling her. Closer than you authorized."
I closed my eyes. The betrayal cut sharper because I'd trusted him with her. Because I saw myself in him.
"Do I move now?" I asked.
"No," the Bishop said. "You let him hang himself. Give him the rope. Watch who he hands it to."
The line clicked dead.
I lowered the phone, the pressure in my chest building like a dam ready to burst.
Jasper was no longer my right hand.
He was a weapon pointed at my heart.