Damian's POV
The next morning, I left earlier than usual. Not because of urgency—though my schedule was packed—but because I needed distance to think with clarity. Not about numbers, mergers, or investor demands. About Emma.
Her admission last night, her quiet I believe you, had struck deeper than I expected. Trust like hers wasn't passive. It was deliberate. Hard-won. And impossibly rare.
It made the quiet danger circling at the edge of her life feel far more personal.
The elevator doors slid open as I entered the Thorne Group headquarters. A wave of activity greeted me—executives rushing between meetings, assistants juggling files, murmured conference calls echoing off polished stone floors. Yet every movement felt irrelevant compared to the one thought fixed in my mind:
Something is coming. Emma feels it.
And I can't protect her from a threat I haven't identified.
