"Because, Anastasia... you’re no good to me dead. That contract isn’t fulfilled until I say it’s fulfilled. And you don’t get to escape what you owe me... not even in a coffin."
His words fell like shards of dry ice in the sunlit silence of the ICU.
Anastasia froze, the fleeting warmth that had sparked beneath his fingertips curdling into a bitter, suffocating frost. She stared down at him... at the heavy surgical dressings binding his chest, the slow, rhythmic crawl of the IV lines, the pale hollows of his cheeks.
He was broken and tethered to machines because he had literally thrown his body into the path of high-caliber bullets for her.
Yet the man lying on that mattress remained entirely, terrifyingly unbothered.
"You’re insane, Damian," Ana whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of fury and bitter disbelief. She pulled back, turning toward the doorway. "I’m calling the doctors. Your vitals are probably spiking from your own arrogance."
Before she could take a single step, his calloused fingers shot out, wrapping tightly around her wrist. The sharp movement pulled violently against the fresh sutures across his shoulder, sending a sharp spike across the cardiac monitor, but Damian didn’t even flinch.
"Not yet," he rasped, his tone rough and commanding. "Come closer."
Ana rolled her eyes, deliberately looking toward the ceiling as she fought with every ounce of her willpower to keep her composure intact. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, determined not to let him see her break, but her body betrayed her.
A sudden, ragged sob choked in her throat, and hot, unbidden tears spilled over her lashes, tracing down her bruised cheek.
Damian’s jaw hardened at the sight of her tears. He gave a firm, unyielding tug on her wrist.
"I don’t like repeating myself, Anastasia. Come here."
Sniffling quietly, Ana wiped the back of her free hand across her eyes. She stepped closer to the edge of the mattress, leaning down toward him, her dark hair falling forward like a curtain between them and the sterile room.
"Get on the bed," Damian commanded, his obsidian eyes dark and unblinking. "Beside me."
"Are you out of your mind?" Ana gasped, her panic flaring as she looked at the maze of wires, monitors, and the thick compression bandages around his torso. "You have two bullet wounds near your spine and fractured bone. I’m going to hurt you..."
"Anastasia."
He spoke her name in that low, dangerous cadence... heavy with absolute authority and a dark, suffocating gravity that left zero room for argument.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Ana hesitated for only a second before carefully lifting a knee onto the mattress.
Moving with agonizing slowness, terrified of jostling his bandaged shoulder or bumping an IV line, she awkwardly shifted her weight onto the edge of the hospital bed, lying down on her side next to him in the narrow space.
Damian turned his head slightly toward her on the pillow.
Slowly, lifting his uninjured arm, he reached out with maddening gentleness. His fingers brushed against her temple, carefully tucking a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear before his thumb swept across her cheekbone, wiping away the wet trail of her tear.
"Such a fool," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
Ana’s brow furrowed in a sharp frown, her chest tightening with indignant anger. After everything that had happened, after standing by his bloody gurney all night, that was the last thing she wanted to hear from his lips.
Before she could snap back, Damian’s thumb dropped to tilt her chin upward, his dark eyes locking onto hers with an intense, unyielding demand.
"Put your lips on mine."
She wanted to protest, to throw his arrogance back in his face, but not a single syllable made it past his name.
"Damian..."
His dark gaze had already dropped to her mouth, fixating on the faint bruise marking her lower lip. His thumb moved with maddening slowness, tracing soothing, hypnotic circles against the soft curve of her cheek.
Physically, he was tethered to machines, bleeding beneath thick layers of gauze, and utterly powerless to force her.
Yet an inexplicable, suffocating pull held her entirely captive to his gravity.
Without understanding why she was giving in, Anastasia leaned forward. Moving with delicate caution, she gently pressed her mouth to his.
His lips were dry and warm, tasting of faint medicine and the familiar, dark heat that always belonged to him. Her heart thudded violently against her ribs. She awkwardly tucked a fallen strand of hair behind her ear and leaned in again, softly brushing her lips across his.
"Closer," Damian rasped against her mouth, his tone heavy with gravel and hunger. "More..."
His heavy hand slid from her cheek into the thick silk of her dark hair, his fingers threading behind her head to anchor her in place. He parted his lips, pulling her down to completely eradicate the space between them.
What had started as a gentle, tentative brush of skin instantly unraveled into breathless, fevered dominance.
Damian didn’t merely kiss her; he consumed her. He took her breath, the faint, helpless whimpers vibrating in her throat, and the desperate softness of her surrender, twisting it into a searing, possessive fire that made the cardiac monitor spike into an erratic, rapid rhythm.
Click.
The heavy suite door swung open without warning.
Victoria Sterling stepped across the threshold, her coat draped over her arm... and froze dead in her tracks, her manicured hand still resting on the polished brass handle.
For the first time, the mother’s icy, unreadable composure fractured into sheer, stunned disbelief.
Ana gasped, breaking the kiss with a sharp intake of air as cold panic hit her. She immediately scrambled to pull away, her face burning crimson, but Damian’s fingers stayed stubbornly tangled in her dark hair, his unyielding grip refusing to let her hide.
Ana smoothing down her oversized cashmere sweater with violently trembling hands. Her cheeks flamed with a mortified, scalding heat that made the butterfly stitches along her cheekbone throb.
Damian’s fingers finally slid from her dark hair with maddening reluctance, his heavy lids lowering as he watched her retreat, entirely unbothered by his mother’s sudden entrance.
Victoria stood frozen in the open threshold. Her eyes darted from her son... awake, lucid, and staring down his ex-wife... to Anastasia, who was standing frozen against the armchair, looking like a deer caught in high beams.
"Damian..." Victoria breathed, the aristocratic ice in her posture instantly cracking.
A rare, breathless softness crossed Victoria’s face as she took in the sight of her son conscious. The surgical team had warned her he might remain comatose for days under heavy sedatives; seeing his dark eyes wide open brought a fleeting, visceral relief that made her chest heave.
She quickly stepped inside, letting the heavy door latch shut behind her. But as she turned toward Anastasia, that momentary relief was instantly eclipsed by a sharp, urgent dread.
The stern matriarch was back, her jaw set, her knuckles white around her leather handbag.
"Anastasia," Victoria said, her tone a chilling blend of authority and tight alarm that immediately erased the room’s lingering heat. "Walter just intercepted an unredacted tactical brief from the federal task force. I came to get you out of this room before anyone leaks your location."
Ana’s heart skipped a beat, the mortification in her chest instantly replaced by cold dread. "Victoria? What happened?"
Victoria stepped to the foot of the bed, her sharp gaze locking onto Anastasia with severe, unyielding gravity.
"Vivian Stark vanished through the harbor grid. She was extracted by an elite private mercenary unit... a ghost outfit with offshore backing that Walter’s intelligence cannot trace," Victoria stated, each word dropping like a lead weight in the sterile room.
Victoria lifted a sealed, stamped federal transit folder in her hand, her voice dropping into a solemn, urgent cadence.
"The communications recovered from the dead shooters weren’t about extorting the Sterling empire or settling a petty grudge with Damian," Victoria said, looking directly into Ana’s wide, dark eyes. "Damian was simply the obstacle they planned to remove. The entire operation... the bait, the ambush, the firing line... was engineered for one purpose."
Victoria paused, the silence in the ICU turning suffocating.
"The real target was you, Anastasia. Whoever is bankrolling this army wants you alive... and they are already planning their next move."
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