Damian didn’t move a muscle.

He didn’t need to. His silence cut sharper than the bass hammering through the club, louder than the whistles and catcalls bouncing off the walls.

Aria had danced for him.

Not for the men waving crumpled bills like dogs begging for scraps. Not for survival. Not even for the stage.

For him.

And every bastard in that room had seen it.

The realization churned like acid in his chest. His jaw tightened, his grip locking around the untouched glass of whiskey sitting in front of him. He hadn’t swallowed a drop. It wasn’t the alcohol burning him alive. It was her.

The way she slid down the pole, her back arching like sin itself had choreographed her. The slow, deliberate roll of her hips as her eyes always, only sought him out.

And then fuck the way she bent low, dragging her fingers along the edge of the stage, staring at him as if the entire world had narrowed down to his seat in the shadows.

His lungs had stopped working.

Damian had killed men without blinking. He had stood knee-deep in blood, unmoved, untouched. But Aria—broken, high, reckless—had undone him with a single look.

And worse, he hadn’t stopped her.

“Fuck,” he muttered, shoving the glass away so hard it rattled against the table.

The men nearby laughed, their voices cutting through the haze.

“She’s gonna get herself killed,” one said with a smirk.

“Or maybe she’s just smart enough to know who to please,” another added, his grin filthy, greedy.

Damian’s vision went black at the edges. His hand twitched toward the knife under his jacket, a reflex older than mercy. It would be easy—one flick of his wrist and their laughter would end in gurgles. Blood would paint the table. Silence would follow.

But he forced himself still.

Killing them wouldn’t erase the truth. Wouldn’t change the fact that Aria had made a choice tonight. In front of the whole fucking room, she had dragged him into the spotlight he despised. And if the wrong men saw it, if his enemies smelled weakness on him, she’d be the one who paid the price.

And he didn’t know if he could stop that.

Damian stood, slow and deliberate, his chair scraping against the floor. The music throbbed, the lights flashed, but a hush rippled through the club anyway. People always felt the weight of him when he moved.

He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. He could feel her.

Every step she’d taken on that stage. Every ragged beat of her pulse. Every reckless spark she had thrown at him, he carried it like shrapnel lodged under his skin.

The night air hit him like steel when he pushed through the doors. Cold, biting, but not enough to cool the heat crawling through his veins. He lit a cigarette, dragging the smoke deep, but it didn’t ground him. His hands still burned with the ghost of hers. His cock still strained against the zipper of his pants, punishing him for a hunger he couldn’t shake.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

She was a junkie. A stripper. Chaotic, fragile, flawed. Everything he’d spent his life despising.

And yet his body wanted her like oxygen.

He exhaled smoke hard, spitting the word at himself. “Pathetic.”

His boots carried him away from the club. He told himself he was going home, back to silence, back to steel walls and empty rooms where nothing could touch him.

But his feet betrayed him.

Minutes later he stood across from her building, the shadows folding around him like a cloak. The cigarette glowed faint in the dark as he watched the light burning in her apartment.

She was moving inside—pacing, changing clothes, bending to scoop one of her dogs into her arms. Something so painfully ordinary it twisted the knife deeper. Because she wasn’t supposed to be ordinary to him. She wasn’t supposed to be human.

And yet she was.

His fists clenched. He wanted to rip the blinds off her window. Wanted to storm inside and tear every pill, every bag, every needle out of her apartment until she had nothing left but him.

He wanted to pin her against the wall, remind her that touching him came with consequences.

He wanted to taste her.

The hunger terrified him more than the violence ever had.

When she finally drew the blinds shut, severing the thread between them, Damian ground his cigarette into the pavement and forced himself to turn away. If he stayed, he’d do something he couldn’t take back.

Because the truth had already sunk its claws in, brutal and undeniable.

Damian Moretti didn’t believe in fate.

But Aria had already become his.