Chapter 6

• Ava’s POV
• I should’ve known better than to trust that skylight.
• The second I dropped through, pain exploded in my side and everything went dark. By the time I drifted back to consciousness, muffled voices floated somewhere above me distant, like echoes from a dream. I tried to move, but my limbs refused to obey.
• Then I felt it.
• Strong arms around me. Not rough or careless, but firm, certain like I was something precious he’d claimed. The scent hit me first clean smoke and something faintly citrus, crisp like winter air. His body was warm, his hold even warmer, but his presence… it radiated power. The kind that came with money, danger, and blood.
• The kind you don’t walk away from.
• I blinked back into the dark, hearing the murmurs around us.
• “President King, this…” someone muttered, confusion thick in their voice.
• President?
• There was a silence that followed, charged and heavy. I could feel him assessing everything the broken ladder, the open skylight, the guilty face of the manager who clearly hadn’t done her job. Then, nothing. No threats. No raised voice.
• Just a silent command.
• Everyone cleared out. Footsteps retreated into silence. And then he bent and lifted me into his arms like I weighed nothing.
• I wanted to fight him off. I wanted to speak. But the world tilted sideways, and all I could do was breathe in that icy-calm strength as the darkness swallowed me whole.
• When I woke up, it was morning.
• The light filtering through the hospital curtains was too bright, too clean. For a moment, I forgot where I was until I saw him.
• He was sitting by the window, backlit by sunlight that refused to touch him. Tall, composed, terrifyingly beautiful in a fitted suit that looked tailored to every sharp angle of his body. His legs were crossed with that effortless confidence men like him are born with. Danger clung to him like a second skin.
• And then his eyes met mine.
• God, those eyes. Cold, bottomless, ocean-deep. They pinned me in place like a scalpel to soft flesh. I couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, as if he were dissecting me with nothing more than his gaze. It was… unbearable. Violent, even in its stillness.
• I tried to steel myself, to sit up straighter, to stop trembling under his stare.
• But the panic came anyway.
• “My God…” I whispered, voice hoarse. “What happened? How did I even get here?”
• He didn’t move. Just watched me.
• I pushed past the lump in my throat. “Was there… was there a boy with me? About four or five years old?” My voice cracked, but I didn’t care. “He doesn’t talk much. Soft little thing, kind of dreamy looking… Did you see him?”
• For the first time, something flickered in those cold eyes. Not warmth no, this man didn’t do warmth but something protective. Possessive.
• He stood.
• And the air in the room changed. It shifted around him, like it had to make space for the sheer force of who he was.
• “You’re safe now,” he said, voice low and smooth, but edged like a blade. “The boy… is with me.”
• With him?
• Why?
• Before I could ask, he took a step closer. And I realized whatever world I’d stumbled into, there was no getting out clean.
• Not with a man like Damien watching me like he already owned me.
• And maybe… a part of me didn’t want to run.
• Cute...
• That was the first word I’d used to describe him. And even now, looking at the small boy lying just feet away from me, I couldn’t think of another.
• My voice had barely left my lips when the man by the window ice carved into human form arched a single brow, as if the word personally offended him. He turned his head toward the cot beside me and said in a voice like cold steel, “You mean Little Treasure?”
• I followed his gaze. My heart clenched the second I saw the boy.
• There he was pale, fragile, but breathing deeply under the soft blanket. An IV was taped gently to the back of his tiny hand. His skin no longer burned with fever. The panic I’d been holding in finally broke, and I exhaled.
• “Yes,” I breathed. “That’s him.” My voice caught. “He’s called… Little Treasure?”
• The name was oddly fitting. He looked like something delicate, something lost and found all at once.
• Carefully, I turned and reached for him, brushing my fingers across his forehead. Cool. Thank God.
• A pang of guilt stirred in my chest. I shouldn’t have let him go off on his own. He was just a child and sick. What if something had happened to him in that filthy bar? What if he’d collapsed before anyone found him?
• I looked up again, this time at the man who’d carried me out like I was some fragile thing worth saving. He hadn’t said much, but the way he held himself, the stillness in his stare it told me everything.
• He was used to control. To fear. To power.
• “You’re… his father?” I asked, already knowing the answer, but needing to hear it.
• There was no point in pretending. The resemblance between them was uncanny same sharp jawline, same dark, unreadable eyes. The boy looked like a miniature version of the man towering over us.
• The man didn’t blink. “Yes,” he said simply. Just that one word. But it fell heavy, final. Like judgment in a courtroom.
• Before I could say another word, a grinning face suddenly popped into my vision, bright and almost cartoonishly large compared to the cold silence I’d grown used to.
• “Hey there, little beauty! You’re awake!” His voice was too cheerful for this room, but strangely welcome. “I’m Little Treasure’s second uncle!”
• I blinked, startled. And then… it hit me.
• That face. The charming smirk. The effortless confidence.
• “Lo… Logan?” I whispered, stunned.
• He gave me a playful wink. “Ah, I see my reputation precedes me.”
• Of course it did. Logan, the flamboyant second son of the King Empire. CEO of Golden Age Entertainment. His face was plastered on magazine covers and gossip blogs alike. There wasn’t a woman in this city who hadn’t heard of him or tried to catch his eye.
• Which meant…
• I turned slowly toward the man who still hadn’t moved. My pulse quickened. If this was Logan then that would make him…
• Damien.
• The Damien.
• I swallowed hard, suddenly aware of every breath I took. The rumors hadn’t done him justice. They called him the king of the capital, the shadow emperor, the man who could silence a room with a glance and now I understood why.
• His silence wasn't just cold it was lethal. A warning. And I’d stumbled right into the center of his world.
• And the boy I’d risked everything to protect?
• He wasn’t just any child.
• He was his.
• The heir to a criminal empire.
• And somehow, I’d just become part of their story.