The night pressed heavily against the windows, storm clouds rolling in full with the kind of weight that made air thump. Adriana sat across from Damian in the safehouse's dark office, her arms crossed tightly across her chest as the stolen hunter's phone throbbed on the desk between them.
Damian's fingers were a blur on the screen, opening it with the confidence of a man who'd solved the locks on a thousand sets before. Adriana crept in close, her very body strung tight.
"There," Damian breathed. A list of contacts lit up the screen half deleted, half encrypted. But one stood apart, not because of the name but because of the emblem to the side: a stylized crest burned into the header of the document.
Damian's jaw snapped together.
Adriana's eyes narrowed. "What is it?"
"Nothing," he answered too quickly, closing the phone.
Adriana leaned over the desk and wrenched it from him, her heart pounding. "Don't lie to me, Damian. Not now."
His eyes, fire and cold steel, locked with hers. For a weighty, suspended instant, nothing existed but the two of them, and the weighty silence between them, tainted with secrets unspoken.
Finally, Damian leaned back in his chair, the shadows of the room cutting across his sharp features. "That symbol doesn't belong to the Moranos. It's older. And more dangerous."
Her breath hitched, but before she could press him further, he pushed to his feet. "We're going for a drive."
They arrived at a rundown old warehouse on the outskirts of the piers, the stench of rust and salt pungent in the dark. Adriana's heels clicked on the ground as she entered behind Damian, her flash casting a light across the room with high ceilings.
Damian stalked like an animal, quiet, each step deliberate. Adriana hated how much she relied on him being there to hold ground. Hated that his existence was infiltrating hers, little by little.
In the back of the warehouse, a single column of offices still had one door open. Damian yanked it broad, revealing rows of ledgers and stacks of papers now covered in dust. Adriana's eyes traveled to the end of the stack: account statements. Her heart skipped.
"These are from Castillo Holdings," she breathed, her throat tight. She flipped the pages, each more vile than the last. "These deals they're siphoning funds out of my dad's old accounts. Someone had the access… someone who thought about every detail."
Damian's gaze was trained on hers, unyielding.
Her blood lost color as the realization struck her. "It wasn't the Moranos that broke us apart. It was someone closer."
Damian didn't have a chance to reply before static whirred from a broken security monitor against the wall. Adriana crossed the room and prodded the screen until the picture resolved into grainy black-and-white video.
Her air was trapped in her chest.
The Betrayer's Face
On the screen, a man stood in the middle of the warehouse floor, issuing orders to invisible troops. His posture was commanding, his silvery hair cropped and neat, his face older but unmistakable.
Adriana stumbled back, her hand covering her mouth. "No… no, it can't be…"
Victor Alvarez.
Her father's closest confidant. The man who had battled along with them in boardroom wars and strategies at the dead of night. The man who had marched by her father's coffin and clasped her trembling hand when the world had caved in.
"He's alive," Adriana whispered, fear draining from her chest. "He's alive and betraying me."
Damian's voice was low, laced with warning of a growl. "Not betraying you. Betraying you. There is a difference.".
She spun on him, rage burning through the shock. "And you knew! You knew something like this was going to happen you withheld it from me!"
His expression didn't change, though his jaw muscle flexed. "I suspected. Victor was too smart to vanish without a trail. Now we know who has been informing the hunters of your every step."
Adriana's vision blurred with anger. The betrayal cut deeper than any knife. "He said he would protect us. He said he would protect me."
Damian's eyes turned dark. "He made many promises, princesa. And men like him always lie."
Adriana stood before the monitor once again, anger and grief wrestling in her chest. That was when she saw it. Not Victor, but what was standing behind him.
On one of the crates leaning against the wall was a rusty insignia, painted black. It was no company emblem, no Morano crest. It was something alien something harder, colder, cut with intent.
Damian's entire body locked up. His hand, which had been resting on the desk, curled into a fist so tight his knuckles whitened.
Adriana furrowed her brow. "What is it?"
He said nothing. Not right away. He leaned into the screen, his face dark, each muscle in his body twisted with identification.
Finally, his voice came out low and rough, as if the man speaking a curse he'd never wished to use again. "That symbol… that is the symbol of Lucian Hale."
She hadn't known his name, but the way Damian said it sent the hairs at the back of her neck twitching.
"Who is he?" she gasped.
Damian stroked his jaw, his eyes burning with something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Regret. Rage. Terror.
"He's my cousin," Damian said at last. "My brother in everything but blood. The man I betrayed. And the man who has every motive to kill me."
Adriana's heart hammered in her chest. "Your cousin?"
Damian's eyes fixed on hers, as cold as steel. "Lucian and I built an empire together one time. Until I made a choice that stripped it all from him. He disappeared in the flames… but seems he's been rebuilding. And now he's hiring Victor to finish what he started."
The world spun around her, the weight of the secrets all at once. Her father's faithful man. Damian's estranged cousin. Not coincidence. None of it coincidence.
Adriana's voice broke as she breathed, "Then he'll come for me, won't he?"
Damian said nothing. His silence was a promise made greater than any words.
She searched his face for comfort, for a glimpse of softness, but there was only the storm raging in his eyes. He would fight. He would kill. But even he was aware Lucian Hale was no ordinary enemy.
And Victor Alvarez was no ordinary traitor. He was the connection between their worlds, proof that Adriana's history and Damian's sin were on a collision course in one deadly storm.
Adriana set her shoulders, trying to steady her voice while her hands trembled. "Then we fight him together."
Damian looked at her for a moment, as if weighing the steel in her words against the danger that was coming. Finally, he nodded once, sharp and grim.
And in his eyes, Adriana saw it: fear. Not for him. For her.
And that's when she knew Lucian Hale wasn't just interested in Damian's empire. He was interested in Damian's heart.
And that included coming for her.