The office doors shut with a solid clunk, banning the hum of journalists and blinding flashes.
Adriana ripped the pearl earring from her ear, spilling it onto her desk with a metallic clang. Her heart was still racing after the press conference, although she'd sooner die than let Damian Hale see her.
"You had no right to represent me," she said, her voice low, burning with anger.
Damian leaned back against the wall as if he had all the time in the world. His tie came loose, eyes unreadable but locked on hers like a hawk on a bird of prey. "Correction I didn't say for you. I said to you."
Her laughter was bitter and explosive. "Don't play word games with me, Damian. You turned a battle into a spectacle. My name in your mouth is a weapon I did not give."
"Nevertheless, the crowd believed so," he answered suavely. "They perceived strength our strength. Take credit for it, Adriana, they observed something you could not have arranged on your own."
She stalked towards him, every step deliberate, her heels clicking marble like a drum. "What they perceived was a predator marking territory."
"Maybe," he said softly, tilting his head, "but tell me was it me you hated out there? Or the way your heart raced knowing we were unstoppable together?"
Her chest tightened, betraying her, and rage flared hotter because of it.
"You're insufferable," she snapped, stopping mere inches from him.
He leaned down slightly, his voice low, dangerous. "And you're trembling."
Adriana stiffened. She wasn't trembling was she? Her fists clenched at her sides. She set her voice to steady steel. "If you think I'll ever kneel at your feet, then you're very much mistaken."
Damian's smile was languid, a spark of flame in darkness. "Who mentioned kneeling? I'd burn at your side."
The silence between them hung, stretched tight as wire, heavy with unsaid things. She could feel the heat of him, the lift and fall of his breath. One misstep, one step forward, and the fires would consume them both.
Two seconds, Adriana nearly did.
Almost.
The knock on the door broke it.
Her assistant's voice shook on the other side. "Ms. Veyra… it's urgent."
Adriana yanked herself away from the brink, smoothing out her blazer with swift, expert hands. She gave Damian a glare that could have drawn blood. "This isn't over."
"Of course not," he replied, infuriatingly composed.
She opened the door, and her assistant nearly fell into the room, her face white. "The Moranos they've launched a campaign. It's everywhere. Social media posts, news outlets. They've leaked documents… documents allegedly revealing you paid bribes to regulators in order to get approval for the Laris deal."
Adriana's blood turned to ice. "What documents?"
Her assistant swallowed hard. "Emails. Signed letters. They look… real."
"They're forgeries," Adriana retorted instinctively. She turned to Damian. "They're forgeries."
He nodded once, calm but hard-eyed. "Of course they are. But nothing will be true to the outside wolves. Perception is the currency, and the Moranos just bought the tale."
Her assistant interrupted, voice tiny: "Investors are calling already. Stocks are plummeting once more. Some are speaking of withdrawal."
Adriana's nails dug into palms until pain seared hot. She had built this empire in brilliance and blood, and now shadows would attempt to destroy it on the basis of lies.
"Get out," she said to her assistant, her voice cold as steel. "And close the door."
When they were alone once more, Damian stood upright, no longer reclining but every inch a commander. "They've taken it up a notch. This's not about slowing you down it's about killing you. If you don't strike back, they'll chew you alive."
Adriana's eyes blazed. "And you don't believe I can?
"I think you shouldn't do it alone." His voice was a knife, slicing and deliberate. "You know I'm right. The Moranos will never give up until one of us is devastated. So we take them on together fast, and hard enough to break their teeth."
Her pride growled to refuse him. Her blood roared to fight alone.
But reason whispered the ugly truth: Damian was right.
"A coalition," she said slowly, tasting the word like poison.
"A war treaty," he supplied, taking a step closer, his eyes black fire. "We scorch them before they can scorch us. And when it is finished then you can resume hating me."
She glared at him, her heart thundering traitorously. She longed to say no. Longed to turn him out of her office, out of her life, out of the shadows moving under her skin.
But she wanted her empire more.
And perhaps, in the area she did not wish to call home, she wished to behold what they were capable of destroying both of them.
Her phone shook uncontrollably on the table. She answered it, reading the message. Her stomach turned to stone.
The Moranos were no longer playing games of waiting.
Breaking News:
Exclusive Footage Released Adriana Veyra in Secret Meeting with Foreign Officials.
Video leak. Grainy, but damning. Her silhouette in a black jacket pushing an envelope across a table. Headlines screamed corruption, bribery, betrayal.
Her fingers shook before she could steady them. "They're framing me for treason now."
Damian stepped forward, his solidity displacing the air, his voice as hard as steel. "Then we introduce them to fire. Give us the files. Every lead you have on the Moranos. We'll take them apart piece by piece and make them choke on their own lies."
Adriana lifted her chin, concealing the quiver in her chest. "And then this is done? When they're ash?"
Damian's eyes held hers, unyielding. "Then only one war will be left between us."
The city lights glinted off the glass walls, the enormity of her empire closing in. Adriana Veyra Varela knew for the first time that the war to come would not only test her throne.
It would test her heart.
And hearts, she realized, were more easily broken than empires.