Damian Wolfe
They say obsession is just love without mercy.
If that's true, then what I feel for Aria Vale is a goddamn crucifixion—slow, exquisite, and entirely my choice.
I arrived at the office before dawn, bypassing the executive floor where the suits still dreamed of becoming kings. I already owned this kingdom. And today, I planned to watch my queen make her next move.
The surveillance feed flickered on. Third floor. Archive room.
There she was—wearing black slacks and a loose silk blouse, hair tied up, exposing the curve of her neck like a challenge. Aria wasn't supposed to be beautiful this way. Not when she was trespassing through my legacy like it was hers to rewrite.
But she was. God help me, she was.
She leaned over a document, biting her bottom lip in thought. My fingers curled involuntarily. I wanted to be that paper. I wanted to crawl into her veins and see what it was like to burn inside her.
She didn't know yet—what she was holding. The last signed deal between our fathers. The one that ended in a bloodstained contract and a shot heard in the dark. My father buried the truth. And hers died for it.
She's not ready for that.
Hell, maybe I'm not.
I hit the intercom.
"Leave the folder on the desk, Ms. Vale."
She startled, looking around the room like she'd forgotten I could see everything. She recovered fast—of course she did. Aria Vale never stayed flustered for long.
She glanced straight at the camera. "Watching me now, are you, Mr. Wolfe?"
"You broke into my office last night. I figured fair's fair."
Her smirk twisted. "So you did let me in."
I leaned forward. "I let you think you got away with it."
A beat of silence stretched between us. I could almost feel her breath fogging the screen.
Then she said it—quiet, defiant. "You don't scare me."
My laugh was low, slow. "You should be terrified."
Because I've made men disappear for less. I've razed fortunes and rewritten destinies.
But Aria Vale?
She's not a threat to my empire.
She's a threat to me.
---
~Fourteen Years Ago~
My father didn't bleed like other men.
Not when the bullet pierced his side.
Not when he laughed while clutching the wound.
And certainly not when he looked at me and said, "Never let them see you crawl."
The warehouse was quiet after the gunfire—a silence so heavy, it felt like judgment.
The man who fired the shot stood shaking, his hands red and trembling. Aria's father, Alexander Vale.
He looked horrified. Like he hadn't meant to pull the trigger. Like betrayal wasn't already sewn into the seams of his suit.
"You don't have to do this," he'd said minutes earlier. "We can cut them out together. End the rot at the top."
My father, always the wolf, had only smiled. "Rot keeps the world interesting, Alex. Without it, what's left? Men like you pretending they're better."
I didn't understand it then—why Alexander looked so haunted. Why he whispered my name as he lowered the gun.
"Damian... I'm sorry."
For what? For surviving?
The guards came seconds later. My father waved them off with one bloodied hand and nodded toward Alexander's crumpled body.
"Make it clean. Let the family mourn."
But he didn't let it die there. No. He made sure the Vale name was shredded. Contracts dissolved. Shares revoked. Everything legal. Everything brutal.
And I watched it all, fifteen years old and already old enough to understand what vengeance looks like when it wears a tailored suit.
What I didn't understand—what I still don't—is why my father didn't kill him outright. Why he staged the story. Why he let the daughter live.
Why he whispered, later that night, as I helped him stitch his own side shut:
"She'll come for us one day. Let her. I want to see if she's got your spine or her father's weakness."
I remember how I stared at the blood staining his shirt and thought: I hope she does come for us. I hope she burns everything.
---
~Present Day~
I blinked, the memory dissolving like ash.
And then my phone buzzed with a single message:
Unknown: "She knows."
A slow smile touched my lips.
Good.
Let her come.
Let her rage.
But when she does… she won't find the boy her father tried to save.
She'll find the man who learned how to survive wolves—by becoming one.
---
Aria Vale
~Present Day~
I couldn't sleep. Again.
The city looked different at night—colder, sharper. Like it had secrets tucked between the skyline and the smog. I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of my penthouse, watching the darkness ripple across steel and glass like a ghost. But it wasn't the skyline that haunted me tonight.
It was the way Damian had looked at me in his office.
Like he knew.
Like he remembered.
Not just me, but everything.
I lit a cigarette I didn't need and barely smoked. Just the ritual—something about it made me feel like I was still in control. Like I wasn't about to unravel.
But I was.
Because I remembered that night too.
Fourteen years ago, I had stood in my father's study, still in my school uniform, listening to the fear in his voice as he whispered my name.
"Aria, if anything happens—if something goes wrong—you stay away from them. You hear me? The Wolfes… they don't forgive. They don't forget."
I hadn't understood back then. I was just a girl watching her father fall apart for the first time. But I remembered the news that followed—the "accidental shooting," the closed casket, the headlines polished with polite lies.
And then everything collapsed. Our fortune. Our protection. Our name.
My family was blacklisted, erased from every boardroom and contract that once begged for my father's signature.
It wasn't an accident. It was a purge.
And the man at the center of it?
Jonathan Wolfe
Damian's father.
Now I was playing his son like a pawn. Or maybe I was the one being moved, square by square, toward something I couldn't see yet.
Damian wasn't just a threat.
He was a scar I hadn't let heal.
And tonight—when he looked at me like he wanted to devour me, ruin me, *own* me—I felt something terrifying.
Not fear.
Not hate.
Desire.
The kind that digs into your spine and makes you forget the weight of revenge. The kind that tastes like danger and sin and loss all wrapped in one brutal bite.
I was supposed to destroy him.
But tonight, I couldn't stop thinking about how it felt to stand so close to him, like two blades pressed against each other, waiting to draw blood.
He made me forget who I was supposed to be.
And I wasn't sure if I hated him more for it—or hated myself for wanting more of it.