Dirty little Summer

The threat

Aurora's pov

The paper felt like ice in my hands.

Before I could even swallow, Anna snatched the note right out of my fingers. She read it once. "What the hell?" she gasped, looking up at me with wide, panicked eyes. "Did Nick send this? Tell me Nick didn't send this."

"I don't know," I whispered, my brain racing. "There’s no signature. No return address. Just... that."

"What's going on?"

Jack stepped through the front doors, tossing his truck keys onto the table. The second his eyes landed on my face, his relaxed posture vanished. "Rory? What happened?"

Anna handed him the note without saying a word.

Jack took it, his blue eyes scanning the dark, jagged handwriting. The muscles in his neck strained, his chest rising and falling heavily.

"I'm going to kill him," Jack said, his voice flat. He turned on his heel toward the door. "I'm going to beat him until he can't walk."

"Jack, stop!" I lunged forward, grabbing his forearm. His arm felt like solid iron under my touch. "You don't even know if it was him!"

"Who else would?" Jack snapped, looking down at me, his eyes burning with rage. "He's losing his mind because you kicked him to the curb."

"We don't have proof," Anna insisted, stepping up beside us. "If you jump him again, Coach will kick you off the team for good."

"I don't give a s**t about the team right now," Jack growled.

"What is all this noise about?"

Damian’s deep voice echoed down the staircase. He descended the steps with effortless power, his dark eyes sweeping over the tension in the foyer.

Without waiting for an invitation, Jack walked up to his father and handed him the paper.

Damian read the single sentence, his dark eyes turning as cold as arctic ice. A dangerous silence filled the room, heavy enough to crush anyone standing in it.

"Who else knows Aurora is staying here?" Damian asked quietly, his eyes lifting to meet mine.

I swallowed hard. "Just... my aunt, Nick, and a few people from the party last night who heard us talking."

Damian didn't waste another second. He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen. "Thomas. Lock down the estate gates. I want every security camera feed from the last two hours reviewed immediately. Find out who delivered a package to the main entrance, and get me a license plate."

He ended the call, looking down at me with an unreadable expression. "No more unverified deliveries come past the gate. Period."

"She shouldn't leave the estate," Jack stated firmly, crossing his arms. "Not until we figure out who wrote this."

"I'm not going to hide in a bedroom like a scared little girl because of some anonymous coward," I shot back. "I don't do hiding."

"Caution is not weakness, Aurora," Damian said softly, taking a slow step toward me. His towering presence instantly wrapped around my senses, his dark cologne filling my lungs. "You will not be locked away, but you will be careful."

"I'll stay with her," Anna promised. "She won't go anywhere alone."

Damian’s phone buzzed in his hand. He put it to his ear, listened for ten seconds, then hung up.

"The delivery driver was wearing a dark hoodie and a baseball cap," Damian reported, his voice dropping an octave. "He kept his face turned away from the cameras, and the vehicle had no rear license plate."

Jack swore under his breath, slamming his fist against the wall. "He planned it."

"It appears so," Damian murmured, his intense dark eyes locked onto mine. The way he looked at me wasn't just protective—it was possessive. Like someone had dared to touch something that belonged to him.

By eight o'clock that evening, the estate felt like a cage.

Anna was locked in her room, stuck on a video call with her mom, and Jack had been called back to the arena for a sudden team meeting about the viral party video.

I needed to breathe. I needed air that didn't smell like money and security.

I snuck out the back glass doors and walked down the rolling green lawn, heading toward the lake at the edge of the property. The moon was high, casting a silver glow over the dark, quiet water. I walked to the end of the dock, kicking off my shoes and letting my bare feet dangle over the edge.

The cool night air brushed against my skin, shivering down my arms.

I heard footsteps echo on the wooden planks behind me.

"I told you I'm fine, Anna," I said without turning around, staring at the dark water. "I just needed ten minutes away from everyone."

"It's not Anna," a deep rumble replied.

My heart did a sudden flip. I turned my head over my shoulder.

Damian was standing at the edge of the dock. He had ditched his jacket, his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the top two buttons, rolling his sleeves up over his thick, muscular forearms. He looked broad, dark, and ridiculously dangerous under the moonlight.

"You shouldn't be sitting out here alone, Aurora," he murmured, walking down the dock with hypnotic steps.

"I'm tired of being treated like fragile glass, Mr. Jordan," I sighed, pulling my knees up to my chest. "I can take care of myself. And apparently, I'm still inside the property so..."

Damian stopped right beside me. Instead of standing over me, he lowered his tall frame, sitting down on the edge of the dock. His long leg brushed against mine, the sheer heat of his body cutting straight through the crisp night air.

"Worrying about your safety doesn't mean I think you're weak," Damian said quietly, his dark eyes fixing on my face. His voice carried that deep tone that had echoed in my ear on graduation night while his hands were mapped all over my body. "It means I know what men are capable of when they lose control."

A breathless pause stretched between us. The tension was thick enough to choke on. I looked at his lips, remembering the exact taste of him, the feeling of his fingers in the dark.

"Damian..." I whispered, his name slipping past my lips before I could stop it.

He reached out, his thick, warm fingers lightly brushing along my jawline. My breath hitched, my n*****s hardening instantly against my thin shirt as a sharp wave of heat pooled right between my thighs.

A sudden vibration made us both stiffen.

My phone vibrated in my lap. At the exact same second, Damian's phone buzzed sharply in his pocket.

We both looked down.

I picked up my screen with trembling fingers. A text message from an unknown number sat on the display.

I opened it.

My blood ran ice-cold as my eyes read the five words staring back at me.

Slowly, without saying a word, I turned the screen toward Damian.

Damian looked down at my phone, then pulled out his own screen. He had received the exact same text from the exact same unknown number.

Four words written in plain text:

*"I can see you."*