Chapter 7 The place hadn't changed.

The same dim lights, the same haze of smoke hanging in the air, the same hum of low conversations that never wanted to be overheard. And in the furthest, darkest corner of the bar if this was all just some game he never quit winning was Nathan.

My heart stuttered.

He appeared... precisely the same. Effortlessly dangerous. At ease in that way that men like him can get away with as if there wasn't a single thing in this world he feared losing.

Including me.

His sharp gaze found me immediately, dragging over every inch of me like a claim. Spine locked up, but who cared? Nathan always saw beyond my armor.

That slow, crooked smile twisted around his mouth lazy, lethal.

"Sweetheart," he drawled, voice like smoke and sin, "thought maybe you forgot how to find me."

I remained standing, holding the table between us like it would somehow protect me.

"I didn't come here to reminisce," I said coldly.

He chuckled soft, gravelly, unimpressed. "Could have fooled me, showing up like that."

I despised how heat curled at the back of my neck. Loathed that after everything after the mess, after the lies, after the destruction he left in his wake some part of me still felt him like gravity."

I forced the words out. "What do you want, Nathan?"

He reclined in his chair as if he had all the time in the world, running a finger slowly around the rim of his glass.

"What I've always wanted," he said. "You."

My stomach twisted.

"That's not going to happen."

His eyes filling with shadow not with rage.) No. Worse.

Amusement.

Nathan fed off my resistance. Always had.

"You just keep telling yourself that, sweet pea," he said softly. "The funny thing is... you're here."

"I'm here because you sent that text. My jaw clenched. "And I want you to get the hell away from me."

He hummed like I had just given him the weather report. No reaction. No fear.

Typical.

"You think Damian will protect you?" he asked quietly.

That stopped me cold.

His eyes sharpened, his gaze gauging me like an open book.

"Word gets around," Nathan added, swirling the whiskey in his glass. "You working for him now? Sitting pretty up there in that glass tower of his?" His smile tilted. "He doesn't care about you, darling. Men like him don't know how."

"I learned not to care from men like you," I retorted.

That did it.

For an instant deep less than a heartbeat his smile faltered.

"You cared," Nathan said quietly. "You cared more than you should've."

"And I really, I cared enough to be like, 'I'm leaving.'

A silence stretched taut between us.

The music played on. I heard clinking glasses somewhere behind me. But here, in this tiny hell Nathan built simply by being, it didn't seem like anyone else in the world existed.

At last, he placed his glass down purposeful, unhurried.

"I don't bring you all here to fight I didn't call you here for that," he said.

I raised a brow. "Could've fooled me."

Nathan's eyes darkened in a way that sent my pulse tripping.

"There's trouble coming," he said, flatly. "Bigger than me. Bigger than your new boss. And you're right in the middle of it."

My skin prickled.

"What kind of trouble?"

He responded only with a classic grin essential and guarded.

"The kind that's gonna hurt."

My heart sank.

This was what Nathan did. He never told the full story. Just enough to draw me in. Enough to get me second guessing everything I thought I knew.

But it was what he said next that really froze me.

"Damian is not who you think he is," Nathan said. "And whatever game he's playing... you're just a piece on the board."

I hated the way those words crawled under my skin.

Because deep down in that placid place I didn't want to know was there - part of me already knew it could be true.

"Don't come near me, Nathan," I said, stepping back a step.

His gaze never wavered.

"You know I can't do that."

"I am no longer yours to chase."

"You were never mine to lose."

And just like that five words I remembered why Nathan was dangerous.

Not because he lied.

But because, at times, he did not.

My pulse was pounding like war drums in my ears as I turned to leave.

But his voice tracked me low, dark, just for me.

"You can't run away from this, sweetheart," he said. "And when it all comes crashing down... don't forget who warned you first."

I didn't look back.

Couldn't.

But long after I walked out into the night the cool air impacting my skin like a slap those words followed me home.

"You didn't come to reminisce," Nathan repeated, his eyes narrowing as if he were both entertained and slightly offended. "No hello? No how have you been, Nathan? Cold."

I crossed my arms, rooted to the spot. "You wrote me out of nowhere like a ghost I never wanted to meet again. What exactly do you want?"

That grin of his God damn, I hated that grin pulled slow at the corner of his mouth. "You never could get to the point."

He relaxed into his seat, fingers drumming against his glass like he had all the time in the world. But at the same time, my heart was racing like I'd just fallen into a snare.

Maybe I had.

"I want to talk," Nathan finally said, his voice lowering to a smoother tone. Too smooth.

I shook my head. "We don't talk, Nathan. We never talked. You lied. I survived. That was our story."

A flash of something perhaps remorse, perhaps mere annoyance passed across his face. But it disappeared too quickly to read.

"That's not how I recall it," he said. "But fine. Let's skip the nostalgia. Straight to business."

His eyes pinned me in place. "Damian."

I felt my stomach tighten. "What about him?"

Nathan laughed, deep, and dark. "Come on, sweetheart. A man like that? Powerful. Cold. Dangerous. You don't think he has secrets of his own? You think he's any safer than I was?"

My mouth went dry.

"You're toying with fire," said Nathan, in a low voice. "Again."

"I can deal with Damian," I retorted.

Nathan's smile vanished. Just like that gone.

"No," he said, almost gentle. Almost sad. "You think you can. But men like him? Men like me? We don't burn easy, baby. "We burn everything else before that."

Silence hung between us, heavy and breathless.

And tonight, I didn't know if Nathan was trying to warn me.

Or threatening me.

Probably both.

I swallowed hard. "If that's all you brought me here for, then we're through."

I turned to leave.

But his voice caught me.

"Aria."

The sound of my name coming from him light and familiar and dangerous gripped me to the floor.

"You ever need me..." His words slipped through the dark, a promise. Like a threat. "You know where to find me."

I didn't look back.

I couldn't.

Because I hated how, deep down, in the place I didn't let anyone see the place I gnawed to suppress

a little, treasonous part of me already knew ...

I always knew how to find him.

Even when I didn't want to.