the man who never let go
619 Words
“Calla.”
My name slid across the phone like a blade, cutting through the careful life I had built. I couldn’t breathe. My grip tightened on the counter, knuckles white.
I hadn’t heard his voice in five years, but I could never forget it. Smooth, commanding, threaded with the kind of power that could unravel me with a single word.
“Hello?” I whispered, even though I already knew.
“Five years.” His tone was clipped, controlled, but beneath it I heard something else. Something dangerous. “That’s how long you thought you could disappear?”
My stomach knotted. The room seemed smaller, closing in. I glanced at the door to Lucas’s room, my heartbeat tripping. He was asleep, safe—for now.
“You have the wrong number,” I said quickly, my voice trembling.
A low chuckle vibrated through the line. “Don’t lie to me, Calla. You know that never worked.”
Panic surged. My thumb hovered over the screen, ready to end the call, but his next words froze me.
“Do it, and I’ll find you anyway.”
The line went dead.
I stood there in silence, my pulse thundering.
He knew.
No—he didn’t know everything. Not yet.
But Damian Vale had found me.
Damian’s POV
Five years.
Five years of silence, of anger, of a hollow ache I tried to bury under work, women, and whiskey. None of it filled the void she left behind.
Calla Monroe.
The one woman reckless enough to walk away from me.
I should’ve let her stay gone. That’s what I told myself every time her memory clawed its way back to the surface. But then I found her name buried in a trail of invoices and relocation records. Small-town life, far from the empire she once lived in with me.
She’d tried to vanish.
But you don’t vanish from Damian Vale.
Now, hearing her voice again, that mix of defiance and fear—it lit a fire I thought had died. She thought she could hide forever. She was wrong.
This time, when I got her back, I wouldn’t let her go.
Back to Calla
The night dragged on, every creak of the old apartment making me flinch. I sat curled on the couch, staring at my phone as if it might burst to life again.
By morning, I convinced myself it was a nightmare. Damian couldn’t be here. Not in this town, not in this life.
Lucas padded into the room, hair mussed from sleep. “Mommy, pancakes?”
I forced a smile, pushing dread into the corners of my mind. “Of course, baby.”
I cooked, listened to his chatter, laughed when he spilled syrup down his shirt. For a few fleeting moments, the world was normal again.
Until the knock came.
Three sharp raps, steady and commanding.
My breath hitched.
I didn’t need to look through the peephole. Somehow, I already knew.
I opened the door.
And there he was.
Damian Vale.
Every inch of him was exactly as I remembered—tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a tailored black suit that screamed money and menace. His gray eyes locked onto me with an intensity that stole the air from my lungs.
“Hello, Calla.” His lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. It was a warning.
Behind me, a small voice piped up.
“Mommy? Who’s that?”
My blood ran cold.
Lucas.
And Damian’s gaze shifted past me, landing on the little boy clutching his toy car. His jaw tightened, his entire body going still.
For a moment, no one moved. No one breathed.
Then Damian’s voice dropped, lethal and soft.
“Care to explain?”
- Writer
