CLAIMED FOR THE CEO'S DEBT

Shadows on the Wall

Chapter 6: Shadows on the Wall

The morning sun broke through the heavy gray clouds, casting sharp, cold rays across the master bedroom of the King Estate. Zara stirred against the silk sheets, her body aching with a deep, delicious exhaustion. The scent of woodsmoke and clean linen surrounded her.

She opened her eyes to find the other half of the bed empty, the sheets still indented where Damien had slept.

A sudden panic gripped her until she heard the low, tense murmur of his voice coming from the attached terrace. Zara pulled on the soft silk robe, wrapping it tightly around her waist, and padded softly toward the open glass doors.

Damien stood by the stone balustrade, his shirtless back a landscape of rigid, chiseled muscle. He held his phone pressed to his ear, his jaw clenching so hard the veins in his neck stood out like cords.

"I don't care what firewall you have to bypass," Damien growled into the receiver, his voice a lethal, vibrating undertone. "Trace the routing number. Whoever sent that email used a secure server inside the corporate building. Find them before I burn the entire IT department to the ground."

He slammed his phone down onto a glass patio table, let out a harsh breath, and ran a hand through his dark, messy hair.

"Damien?" Zara stepped onto the terrace, her voice cautious. "What's wrong?"

Damien spun around instantly. The moment his eyes landed on her, the fierce, unbridled obsession that had consumed him the night before flared in his gaze. He closed the distance between them in two long strides, his large hands immediately clamping onto her waist, pulling her flush against his bare chest. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent deeply, as if she were an anchor keeping him from tearing the world apart.

"You're not going to the office today," he murmured against her skin, his grip tightening possessively. "You're staying here. Under heavy guard."

Zara pulled back slightly, looking up into his troubled midnight eyes. "Tell me what happened. We're supposed to be running this company together, remember?"

Damien looked at her for a long, silent moment, his thumb tracing a fierce, protective circle against her hip. Finally, he reached over to the table and picked up his tablet, sliding it into her hands.

"An encrypted email was sent to my personal account at four AM," Damien said, his voice dropping to a freezing pitch. "And copy-sent to three senior members of the board."

Zara looked down at the screen. Her breath hitched, her blood running completely cold.

It was a gallery of high-resolution photos. The first shot showed her and Damien through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the boardroom yesterday, sitting close, his hand resting on the armrest of her chair while he whispered in her ear. The second shot was even worse—it was taken from the balcony right outside this very bedroom, captured through the sheer curtains just hours ago. It showed Zara lying across Damien's bare chest, their bodies tangled in the afterglow of their passion.

Beneath the images was a single line of text:

> *The Co-Management Directive forbids personal collusion and conflicts of interest that compromise shareholder value. Step down by noon, Miss Hart, or the press gets the story of how the waitress bought her boardroom seat.*

>

Zara’s hands shook, nearly dropping the tablet. "Someone was watching us. Inside the house. Damien, the security team—"

"The security team answers to me, which means whoever did this bypassed my network or bribed someone very high up," Damien interrupted, his eyes burning with a terrifying, protective fury. He leaned down, pressing his forehead against hers, his breath hot and ragged. "They want you gone, Zara. They think they can use our relationship to claim you're manipulating me, or that I'm manipulating you to keep control of the company."

"If this gets leaked, the board will call an emergency vote to suspend my voting rights," Zara whispered, the sudden weight of her reality crashing down on her. "My mother's medical trust... everything we built over the last four months..."

"I won't let them touch you," Damien growled, his lips brushing against hers in a fierce, desperate promise. "I am completely, utterly obsessed with keeping you safe, Zara. If they think a few photos will make me back down, they don't know what I'm capable of when someone tries to take what's mine."

He grabbed his phone again, dialing a rapid code. "Arthur. Call a closed-door meeting with Harold Vance and the executive committee at ten AM. No press. No assistants. Just us."

By ten-thirty, the atmosphere inside King International’s private executive suite was toxic.

Harold Vance sat at the small conference table, a smug, insufferable smile stretching across his wrinkled face. He didn't even look at Zara when she walked in beside Damien, still wearing her sharp green suit, her expression an unreadable mask of corporate steel.

"Damien, Zara," Harold said smoothly, tapping his fingers against his leather folder. "I assume you've seen the correspondence circulating among the senior committee this morning. It's an incredibly unfortunate look for the company. A co-CEO sleeping with the primary stakeholder to secure her position? The ethics committee will have a field day."

"The ethics committee answers to the majority shareholders, Harold," Zara spoke up, her voice cutting through the smugness in the room like a diamond-tipped blade. She sat down, leaning forward, her amber eyes flashing with a dangerous confidence that made Harold’s smile falter. "And as of right now, Damien and I own one hundred percent of the voting stock combined. If you want to talk about ethics, let's talk about corporate espionage."

Harold’s eyes narrowed. "Are you accusing me of taking those photographs, Miss Hart?"

"I'm accusing whoever stands to benefit from my departure," Zara shot back, refusing to flinch. "You tried to force a fraudulent acquisition four months ago, and I stopped it. You've been trying to find a way to invalidate my father's will ever since."

Damien didn't sit down. He stood directly behind Zara’s chair, his large hand resting firmly on her shoulder, a blatant, unyielding display of ownership and alignment. The raw predator energy he radiated made the entire room feel like a trap.

"Let's make one thing exceptionally clear, Vance," Damien said, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly baritone that made the air freeze. "You have exactly sixty minutes to find out who sent that email and bring me the original server files. If those photos touch a single media outlet, I will personally liquidate every asset associated with your investment firm. I will bankrupt your partners, I will pull our logistics contracts from your shipping hubs, and I will leave you with nothing but the clothes on your back."

Harold turned a sickly shade of gray, his composure fracturing. "Damien, you can't threaten the board over a waitress—"

Before the word could fully leave Harold's mouth, Damien leaned down, slamming both palms onto the table with a deafening crack. "She is the co-CEO of this empire. She is my partner. And if you ever refer to her like that again, I won't wait for the sixty minutes to expire."

The silence in the room was deafening. Harold swallowed hard, scrambling to gather his papers as he stood up, his hands visibly shaking. "I'll... I'll look into the IT logs immediately," he stammered, practically sprinting out of the executive suite.

The heavy glass door clicked shut.

Zara let out a breath, turning her chair around to look up at Damien. "That was a dangerous bluff, Damien. If he calls your bluff, the stock will take a massive hit."

"It wasn't a bluff," Damien murmured, his intense gaze locking onto her lips, his absolute fixation returning with a vengeance. He leaned down, pulling her up from the chair and into his arms, his mouth slamming down onto hers with an aggressive, hungry passion that wiped every corporate thought from her mind.

The kiss was desperate, frantic, born from the shared adrenaline of the threat. Zara wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down, her body completely surrendering to the protective heat of his embrace. He pinned her gently against the edge of the large desk, his hands sliding up her thighs under her skirt, his touch scorching hot against her bare skin.

"We shouldn't... not here," Zara gasped against his lips, though her fingers were already unbuttoning the top of his vest.

"I don't care about the boardroom, Zara," Damien groaned, his composure shattering as he lifted her onto the desk, scattering a pile of financial reports to the floor. "Let them watch. Let them vote. You're mine, and I'm going to claim you until everyone in this building knows it's suicide to touch you."

He tore open his shirt, his chiseled chest pressing against her silk blouse as he drove into her, a deep, guttural roar escaping his throat. Zara cried out, her head throwing back as the intense, breathless rhythm consumed them both, the danger outside only making the fire between them burn hotter, wilder, and completely out of control.

But as the echoes of their passion faded into the quiet of the office, the phone on the desk buzzed fiercely.

Zara reached out a trembling, damp hand, sliding the screen open. It wasn't an email from Harold. It was a text message from a blocked number, accompanied by a video file.

She opened it. The video showed a dark, clinical room. A nurse was adjusting an IV drip attached to an elderly woman's arm. It was Zara's mother. A shadow moved across the camera lens, and a gloved hand held up a syringe filled with a clear, lethal fluid right next to the line.

The text below read:

*Sixty minutes is a long time to wait, Mr. King. Sign the resignation papers, or the old lady goes to sleep permanently.*