Chapter 4 Her Past Has Teeth

Damien wasn't the kind of man who chased shadows.

He made shadows run from him.

But this girl-Aria-had flipped the rules of his world.

She wasn't a model clinging to his arm at a charity gala, or a gold-digger waiting for her name to be printed beside his. She wasn't polished or perfect.

She was real.

And she was hiding something.

Sitting at the sleek desk in his penthouse, Damien pulled up her employee file on the hotel's secured network. Fake names were common. So were forged records. He scanned every line.

Aria Blake.

Age: 22.

Emergency contact: None.

Address: Low-income housing block on 5th Street.

No history before age sixteen. No social media. No high school diploma on file.

No one just appeared out of nowhere.

Unless they had something to hide.

Across the city...

Aria sat in the silence of her apartment, the faint hum of the fridge the only sound. She held her mother's hand as she slept on the worn-out couch, her breathing uneven but calm-for now.

Aria stared at the small bag of pills on the table.

They were running out.

And the clinic had already refused another refill without payment.

I can't afford this. I can't afford him, either.

A soft knock rattled the door.

Her chest seized.

She approached slowly, peering through the peephole.

No one was there.

But when she opened the door, a single envelope lay on the floor.

No name. No stamp.

Just one sentence on a torn slip of paper:

"Stop talking to him-or he'll learn what you did."

That same night...

Damien met with Reid, his security chief, in a sleek black SUV parked along the edge of the city.

"You were right," Reid said, handing him a folder. "Aria Blake doesn't legally exist before six years ago. Whoever she was before that, it's been buried deep."

Damien flipped open the folder.

A faded, grainy image.

A girl-barely fourteen-with bruises on her arms and wild fear in her eyes.

"Foster report," Reid said. "She ran from the system after a violent incident. The details are sealed."

Damien stared at the image, something twisting inside him.

Fear.

Pain.

And rage-for the version of her that had no one to protect her.

"Find out who hurt her," Damien said coldly. "And make sure they never touch her again."

Back in her apartment, Aria stared at the note like it might bite her.

They know. Someone knows.

She couldn't let Damien get dragged into it. He was powerful, yes. But power didn't stop bullets. And her past didn't play fair.

So she did the only thing she could.

She went back to work the next day like nothing happened.

And prayed he'd forget her name.

But it was already far too late for that.