Chapter Three : Damian
387 Words
Through the camera lens, Elena Hart looked smaller than she had in the photo.
She sat on the fire escape of her crumbling apartment building, a cigarette glowing between her fingers, curls falling loose around her face. She tilted her head back, eyes on the night sky like she was waiting for it to give her answers it would never provide.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Jax muttered beside me, pulling on his beer.
I didn’t respond.
It was true—she wasn’t flashy like her family. No designer clothes, no cars, no jewelry. She looked tired, worn. But there was something under it. A sharpness in her gaze. A stubborn set to her jaw.
“She’s clean,” Cade said from the corner, arms folded. “No contact with the family in months. She works, smokes, sleeps. That’s it. Could be a waste of our time.”
I lowered the binoculars slowly, my eyes tracking the way she exhaled a curl of smoke toward the stars. “She’s not clean,” I said flatly. “She’s Hart blood. That’s all that matters.”
Cade’s mouth twisted. “So what—you’re going to waltz in, play boyfriend, and she’s going to hand you the keys to daddy’s empire?”
My jaw ticked. “She doesn’t need to hand me anything. All I need is to get inside her head.”
He raised a brow, half-amused. “And how do you plan on doing that?”
“Simple.” My gaze cut back to Elena. “You tame her.”
The words hung heavy in the air.
Tame. Not break. Not destroy. Bend. Mold. Bring her into line until she trusts you enough to forget what you are.
She had fire—I could see it even from here. The trick would be dimming it just enough to make her mine to use.
Cade snorted. “Sounds messy.”
“Messy doesn’t matter if it works.”
But even as I said it, something twisted in my chest. Because the longer I watched her—alone, smoke curling around her, defiance written in the quiet way she claimed her tiny piece of sky—the more I realized I didn’t just want to tame her.
I wanted to own her.
Tomorrow night, I’d make my move.
- Writer
