Aria Vale
You know that moment right after you jump?
Right before gravity remembers you exist?
That sharp, hollow silence?
That's what it felt like walking out of Damian Wolfe's office.
Through it all, I maintained my composure. I smiled when appropriate, frowned when necessary, projecting an aura of confidence I was far from feeling. Inside, I was crumbling, a fragile dam bursting under the relentless pressure. But they couldn't see it. They shouldn't smell the fear.
Never let the wolf see you bleed.
The elevator doors slid shut behind me, sealing away the beast in the glass tower. I exhaled for the first time in twenty minutes.
God. He was everything they said and worse.
Beautiful in the most dangerous way. All sharp lines and sharper eyes. A man carved from ice and molten fury.
He looked at me like he wanted to consume me.
But I'd looked back like I wanted to watch him burn.
I smiled faintly to myself.
Let him wonder who I was. Let him chase. Let him dig.
That's how you trap a predator—you make him believe he's stalking you.
In reality, I'd been preparing for this for years.
Tracking him. Studying him. Building the perfect noose made of his own sins.
He didn't recognize me.
Not yet.
Good.
The last time Damian Wolfe saw me, I was seventeen and bleeding.
The girl from back then? She died.
And I buried her with a vow.
One day, I'd make the man who destroyed my world beg to be broken.
I didn't come here for money.
I came for retribution.
And if I had to set myself on fire to watch him burn?
So be it.
The elevator dinged at the ground floor. I walked past security without a glance, out into the cold city air. The sky was bruised purple and gold, like it couldn't decide between dusk and dawn. Perfect metaphor, really.
I slid into the black town car waiting at the curb.
"Did he take the bait?" Kira asked from the driver's seat, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
I peeled off my blazer, letting the adrenaline fade like smoke. "He took the whole damn hook."
"Think he'll come after you?"
I smiled, slow and sharp.
"I'm counting on it."
Because Damian Wolfe doesn't let things go.
Especially not women who walk in, slice open his empire, and leave him bleeding curiosity.
He'd chase me now. Investigate. Obsess.
And when he got close enough?
I'd destroy him from the inside out.
Same way he did to my father.
---
Kira pulled away from the curb, merging into traffic like a ghost—silent, unnoticed, efficient. She was ex-military, ex-something, and fiercely loyal. The only person I trusted with this operation.
"He's going to find everything on you," she said after a beat. "Or think he did."
I looked out the window, watching the city blur past like memory. "That's why we gave him exactly what we wanted him to see."
"College degrees. Corporate ties. Overseas deals. A few skeletons to make you feel real." Kira snorted. "You realize you've built a whole fake empire just to bait a man."
"He's not a man," I said softly. "He's a disease. And I'm the cure."
She glanced at me in the mirror again. Her eyes held something between admiration and fear. "You sure you're ready for this, Aria? You're not playing with a shark. You're stepping into the water with a fucking leviathan."
"I'm not playing," I said, my voice a quiet blade.
She didn't argue after that.
We drove in silence, the kind that wrapped around your ribs and squeezed. I could still feel his gaze on me—those cold, cutting eyes that saw too much too fast. He didn't recognize me. But a part of him sensed something.
And that was almost worse.
Because the Damian Wolfe I remembered didn't miss details. He collected them. Owned them. Turned them into weapons.
If he dug deep enough, he'd find cracks in the story I built. The false identity, the erased records, the missing years.
He'd get close.
He'd try to rip me open.
And when he did?
He'd see the girl he left bleeding.
The one who crawled out of the fire just to set his world ablaze.
I swallowed hard, closing my eyes against the rush of memory.
My father's blood on the marble floor.
The sound of glass shattering.
Damian's signature on the deal that ruined everything.
He didn't pull the trigger. He didn't need to.
He built the cage.
Lit the match.
Watched the fire.
Now it was my turn.
But revenge wasn't clean. It left ash in your mouth. Burned bridges behind you before you ever reached them.
And some part of me—the part that still remembered how to cry—was afraid.
Afraid that if I went too deep, I'd become just like him.
But I couldn't stop.
Not now.
Not when I was this close.
I opened my eyes. The city had changed around us. The lights were colder, harder. We were in the south district—industrial, forgotten. My safehouse was here, tucked between shadows and secrets.
The car rolled to a stop.
Kira looked back. "Last chance. We disappear, change names. Start over."
I stared at the building in front of me—faceless, empty, perfect.
"No," I said. "We finish what we started."
She nodded. "Then you should read this."
She handed me a tablet, screen glowing with a new message.
UNKNOWN SENDER:
You have my attention now, Miss Vale.
Let's see if you can keep it.
I stared at the message, a slow smile curling my lips.
Damian Wolfe had taken the bait.
Now I just had to make sure he never saw the hook.