Smoke curls upward from the crushed hood of the SUV, the metal still ticking from heat. The world around us is a blur of shattered glass, twisted streetlights, and the distant echo of sirens.
My head throbs, my vision wobbles but Caspian's grip on me is steady, grounding.
"Are you hurt?" he asks, eyes scanning me with terrifying intensity.
"I—I think I hit my head," I murmur.
His jaw clenches like the idea physically pains him. "Let me see."
He tilts my chin toward the dim glow of the dashboard. His fingers brush my skin gentle, careful, reverent.
It throws me off more than the crash.
"You'll bruise," he murmurs. "But you're okay."
"What about you? You're bleeding…"
"It's nothing." He wipes the blood at his temple with the back of his hand, ignoring it. "We need to move."
Before I can question him, he reaches for his door, kicks it open and a full wave of cold night air rushes in.
Then, he turns to me.
"Aria, listen to me very carefully."
His voice drops to something lethal, protective, and intimate all at once.
"They're coming."
My blood runs cold.
"Who?" I whisper.
"People who don't leave witnesses." His grey eyes lock onto mine. "And they will not touch you. Do you understand me?"
A crash of metal echoes behind us, another vehicle stopping.
My heart leaps into my throat.
Caspian curses under his breath. "Move."
He climbs out, then reaches back inside, scooping me into his arms like I weigh nothing. The sudden motion knocks the breath out of me.
"I can walk—"
"No time."
He carries me away from the wreck, boots crunching over broken glass. His chest is warm and tight against my side; his heartbeat is a hard, steady drum.
Behind us, footsteps approach.
"Caspian?" My voice trembles.
"I see them."
Ahead, another pair of headlights sweep across the underpass, lighting the concrete pillars in harsh white.
We're outnumbered.
My pulse spikes. "We need to hide—"
"We're not hiding," he says, setting me down gently behind a concrete barrier. "You stay here. You don't move. You don't breathe loud."
"What are you doing?"
He pulls a gun from a holster hidden beneath his ruined suit jacket.
My stomach drops.
"Ending this," he says simply.
"No—Caspian—"
He steps in front of me, blocking the whole world with his broad shoulders and tall, unshaken silhouette.
The perfect, terrifying calm of a man who has killed before
…and will again without hesitation.
Three armed men appear from the smoke and headlights.
"Leone!" one of them shouts. "You should've stayed in your glass tower, brother!"
Caspian tilts his head. "Wrong night to die."
Gunfire erupts.
I flinch as bullets crack across the underpass. Concrete chips explode near my knees.
But Caspian—
Caspian moves like someone who has lived his whole life on the edge of violence.
Precise. Controlled. Deadly.
Two shots.
One man drops.
A pivot, a sidestep—
Another falls.
The last man tries to flank him. Caspian is faster.
He grabs the attacker by the collar, slams him into a pillar, and presses a gun to his throat.
"Who sent you?" Caspian demands.
The man spits blood. "You already know."
"Say it."
"DeLuca," he chokes out. "Marco DeLuca wants the girl."
My heart stops.
Me.
Not Caspian.
Caspian's voice turns to ice. "That was your biggest mistake."
A final shot echoes through the underpass.
Silence returns.
He turns back toward me with no hesitancy, no fear, no second-guessing.
But when he kneels in front of me…
the violence melts off him like smoke.
"Aria." His hand cups the back of my head. "Are you hurt? Answer me."
"I—I don't understand," I breathe. "Why do they want me?"
His jaw flexes hard. Too hard. "Because of something I intend to uncover before they get another chance to try."
The way he says it,
like he's staking a claim—
sends a dangerous shiver down my spine.
"Come on," he says softly, lifting me again. "We're not staying out here."
"Where are you taking me?"
He looks down at me, eyes dark and absolute.
"Somewhere nobody touches what's mine."