//HEAVEN'S POV//
The man fills the doorway like a shadow cut loose from hell.
Tall, broad, but not like Damien. Damien's presence commands. This man's lurks. His suit is cheaper, his tie loosened, his hair slicked back in a way that feels wrong.
But it's his smile that freezes me in place—thin, knowing, a predator's curve.
"You look just like her," he says in accented English, his gaze sliding over me. "Your mother."
My breath falters. My mother's name hasn't been spoken in years. Not by me. Not by my father. And never by a stranger.
I force steel into my voice. "Who the hell are you?"
He steps further inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The lock snags. He wants privacy.
"No one important," he murmurs, eyes flicking to the desk. "But your father… he owed men like me more than his soul could afford. And now—" his smile sharpens "—debts fall to the blood he left behind."
The urge to scream for Damien claws at my throat, but I don't. Not yet. If this man got in, it means Damien doesn't know he's here. Which means I'm alone.
And the folder with my name inside burns like a brand under the pile.
I step back, slow, controlled. My hands tremble, but I keep them at my sides. "If you think you can scare me—"
"I don't need to scare you," he interrupts, his tone almost gentle. "I just need to deliver a message."
He reaches into his jacket.
I freeze.
//DAMIEN'S POV//
The Maserati eats up the road, the engine growling beneath me, but it isn't fast enough.
Something gnaws at me, a feeling I haven't had since I was nineteen. The night I earned this scar. The night I learned what it meant to lose control.
The air in my chest is too tight. The city blurs past. My knuckles grip the wheel, white, blood still caked beneath my nails.
I dial Enzo. The line clicks.
"Is she safe?" I demand.
There's silence. Too long.
My gut twists into iron.
"Answer me."
Enzo exhales. "Boss… the perimeter was breached."
I slam my fist into the steering wheel. The horn blares like a warning.
Heaven.
//HEAVEN'S POV//
The man pulls something from his jacket. Not a gun. A folded photograph. He tosses it onto the desk, and the image stares back at me like a ghost.
My father. Younger. Arm slung around a man who looks exactly like Damien.
Except it isn't Damien.
It's his father.
"You see," the intruder says softly, "your father and his weren't just enemies. They were brothers once."
My throat goes dry.
Damien never told me this.
//DAMIEN'S POV//
I take the corner too fast. Tires screech. The gates to the estate rise ahead, but I don't slow.
Because the world just narrowed to one thought, one name, one truth.
Heaven.
And God help whoever is in that house when I walk through the door.
//HEAVEN'S POV//
The photograph burns into me. My father, younger, with the same cold smile I remember. Beside him, Damien's mirror in another lifetime—sharper jaw, darker hair streaked with silver.
His father.
I want to deny it, to shove the picture away, but the man's voice won't let me.
"Funny how history repeats," he says, leaning closer, the stench of smoke and cheap whiskey coating his words. "Your father betrayed his own blood. Cost him everything. And now you—" his eyes crawl down my body "—you'll pay what he owed."
My pulse spikes, but my voice comes out steady. "If you touch me, you won't leave this house alive."
He laughs. Cruel. "Your pretty monster isn't here to save you, little Moretti."
And then—
The sound of tires screeching outside. Heavy footsteps pounding the marble hall.
The man's smirk falters.
The door bursts open.
//DAMIEN'S POV//
He's standing too close.
That's the first thing I see. His shadow leaning over her, his stink fouling the air I own.
The second thing I see is the fear in Heaven's eyes. Not terror. Not weakness. The kind of fear that sharpens a person's edges. My ruin, standing tall even when cornered.
It makes something in me snap.
I cross the room in three strides. My hand closes around the intruder's throat, slamming him against the wall so hard the frame rattles.
"You." My voice is low, calm, the kind of calm that only means violence. "Made. The wrong. Choice."
He claws at my grip, face reddening. His eyes dart to Heaven like he thinks she'll save him. Fool.
I lean closer, my lips at his ear. "You came into my house. You looked at what's mine. You breathed near her." My grip tightens, his heels scraping the wall. "That's a death sentence."
//HEAVEN'S POV//
I should look away. I should tell him to stop. But I don't.
Because for the first time, I see Damien unmasked. The scar at his jaw pulls taut, his eyes steel and fire, every muscle in his body coiled with lethal precision.
This isn't teasing, commanding Damien. This is the predator everyone else fears.
And he's doing it for me.
His grip doesn't falter as the man sputters, gasps, chokes. "Tell me," Damien growls, "who sent you. Say it, and maybe I'll make it quick."
The intruder coughs, wheezes. "The—brotherhood… you know who…"
Damien's smile is sharp and merciless. "Good boy."
And then I hear it—the crack of bone beneath Damien's hand. The body drops, lifeless, at his feet.
The silence that follows is deafening.
Damien turns to me slowly, chest rising and falling, eyes locking on mine.
"You see, A mè rovina," he says, voice rough, scar catching in the low light, "this is what my world demands."
I should run. I should scream. Instead, I tremble—not from fear. From the weight of knowing I've already chosen.
Chosen him.