Chapter 4

I didn't make it to the hospital that night. His security guards found me in the back stairwell and dragged me back to the penthouse. The next morning, a defeated silence hung between us. I expected punishment, another brutal lesson. Instead, he walked into the dining room where I sat picking at a breakfast I couldn't eat and placed a phone on the table.

"It's your mother's doctor," he said, his voice neutral.

My hand trembled as I picked it up. "Hello?"

"Ms. Hayes," the doctor' s voice was warm, relieved. "I have wonderful news. Your mother's condition has stabilized. It' s remarkable. The new treatment, the one Mr. Harrison authorized, it's working better than we could have ever hoped. She's resting comfortably."

I sank back into my chair, overwhelmed with relief and confusion. I looked at Harrison. He was watching me, his expression unreadable. He had created the crisis by keeping me from her, and then he had solved it. He was the arsonist and the firefighter, the source of all my pain and all my hope. This was his control, a complex web of punishment and reward that left me completely dependent on him.

A week later, the phone rang in the middle of the night. It was Harrison's private line, the one that sat on his bedside table. He answered it, his voice groggy with sleep, but it quickly sharpened.

"Where?" he demanded. "How many?"

He listened, his body tensing. He hung up and looked at me, his eyes wide with an emotion I couldn't place. It looked like fear.

"Stay here. Lock the door. Don't open it for anyone but me."

Before I could ask what was happening, he was gone. I did as he said, the sound of the lock clicking into place echoing in the silent room. Hours passed. I paced the floor, my mind racing. Who was he afraid of? What could possibly threaten Damien Harrison?

Just before dawn, I heard a commotion outside, a key scraping in the lock. The door swung open and Harrison stumbled in, his suit torn, his face bruised and bleeding from a cut on his forehead. He wasn't the one who was hurt. He was the one who had been in a fight.

And then I saw it. The source of his fear. He was holding a gun.

"What happened?" I whispered, rushing toward him.

"A rival," he bit out, wincing as he leaned against the wall. "Old business. He thought he could get to me... by getting to you."

My heart stopped. The late-night call, the fear in his eyes. It hadn't been for himself. It had been for me. He had gone out there to protect me.

Without thinking, I reached out to touch the cut on his forehead. "You're bleeding."

He flinched at my touch but didn't pull away. In that moment, the lines between captor and protector blurred. He had put me in this gilded cage, but he was also the one guarding it from bigger monsters outside.

"They'll be back," he said, his voice grim. "They won't stop."

He was right. A few days later, they came for us. Not with a subtle threat, but with brute force. They ambushed his car as we were returning from a follow-up appointment for my mother. The world exploded in a shower of shattered glass and screeching metal. Harrison acted on pure instinct. He threw his body over mine, shielding me from the spray of glass as our car spun out of control.

Pain shot through my arm as a piece of shrapnel embedded itself in my bicep. But Harrison took the brunt of it. I heard him groan, a low, guttural sound of pure agony. When the car finally crashed to a stop, the silence was deafening.

"Damien?" I whispered, my voice shaking.

He pushed himself off me, his face pale, a dark stain spreading across his white shirt. "Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice strained.

"My arm... but you..."

"It's nothing," he gritted out, but I could see the lie. He was seriously injured.

Men in black masks surrounded the car, pulling open the doors. One of them grabbed me, his grip like iron. Harrison, despite his injury, moved with a terrifying speed. He launched himself at the man holding me, a blur of controlled violence. He disarmed him and another man before a third one brought the butt of a rifle down on the back of his head. Harrison crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

They dragged him away. They left me there, bleeding in the wreckage of the car, my screams swallowed by the night. I was facing a life-or-death situation. Harrison was the only thing standing between me and them. In a cold, calculated move, he had told his men that if anything happened to him, they were to detonate a series of charges in his rival's offshore accounts, effectively ruining him. It was a suicide mission, a scorched-earth policy. He was willing to sacrifice everything to keep me safe, or rather, to keep his possession safe. His plan was cold, cruel, and utterly effective. He was using his own life as a bargaining chip, a tool to maintain his control over me even when he was on the verge of death. His control was absolute, even in his moments of weakness.