"Can I make love to you?"
The words hung in the air between them, devastatingly tender.
Aria’s face instantly flushed a vibrant red, her heart hamring against her ribs. ’Make love?’ The phrase short-circuited her brain completely. ’Is it different from sex?’ It sounded infinitely more vulnerable.
"Yes," Aria whispered breathlessly, her hands sliding up to grip his broad shoulders.
Damien let out a soft exhale. He leaned in, his gaze dropping to her lips. Their lips brushed—a feather-light contact that sent a hot shiver straight down Aria’s spine. She let her eyes flutter shut, parting her lips.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The aggressive pounding on the door shattered the quiet intimacy of the suite like a gunshot.
Damien froze.
Aria’s eyes snapped open, her breath catching in her throat.
Only Richard knew which room they were in. Unless they had been followed.
Before Damien moved, the pounding rhythm changed.
Tap-tap-tap. Taaap-taaap-taaap. Tap-tap-tap.
Three short. Three long. Three short.
SOS.
Aria’s blood ran completely ice-cold. She recognized the Morse code instantly.
Were they in danger?
Her mind imdiately spiraled to the French mafia. She had been banking on the fake coma plot to fool the Vipers too. They were powerful, resourceful, and had eyes everywhere. She wouldn’t be surprised if they had already tracked her down, but she had desperately hoped for more ti to figure things out.
Aria and Damien exchanged a sharp, serious look. He was fully preparing for the worst-case scenario: the Vipers finally attacking Aria directly.
Aria quickly scrambled off his lap, pulling her knees to her chest.
Damien stood up. He moved silently toward the door. He pressed the small screen that connected to the door cara.
His brow furrowed in deep confusion.
It was Richard. Only Richard.
But the elite security operative looked visibly sweating, pale, and incredibly nervous—an uncharacteristic break in composure.
"What is the matter?" Damien demanded through the intercom.
Richard cleared his throat, shifting his weight.
"Sir," Richard started, his voice strained. "The hotel is currently being evacuated. The NYPD is swarming the building. They have patrol cars blocking every street on the block."
Aria had crept up behind Damien just as Richard spoke. She peeked around his bicep, her eyes wide. "The police? Why?!"
"Because," Richard swallowed hard. "Your sister, sir. Ms. Diana has officially declared you a missing person in imminent danger."
Damien stared at his operative. "What?"
"It is all over the news and social dia, sir," Richard reported bleakly.
Damien’s jaw tightened.
He had intentionally turned his phone off. Diana had been calling and ssaging him incessantly, demanding to know where he had gone, why he left her in the car, and if he was coming back.
He had gotten utterly fed up with her. He had just wanted a few hours of uninterrupted peace to spend ti with his wife, so he had turned the damn phone off.
Aria grabbed the hotel remote from the coffee table and clicked the power button. The massive flat screen TV mounted on the wall booted up directly to a 24-hour local news channel.
Aria gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
There, filling the entire high-definition screen, was Diana Sinclair.
She was sitting in her wheelchair outside the front doors of the hotel, surrounded by a chaotic swarm of flashing cara lights and news microphones.
And she was sobbing. It was a loud, ugly, hysterical weeping that deserved an imdiate Emmy nomination.
"He went into that hotel over an hour ago and he hasn’t co out!" Diana wailed, clutching a tissue to her chest. "I have been trying to call him, but his phone is turned off! Damien never turns his phone off! Never!"
The reporter thrust a microphone closer. "Ms. Sinclair, it has only been an hour. Isn’t it possible he’s just in a eting?"
"You don’t understand!" Diana shrieked, looking wildly at the caras. "My brother is in a very, very delicate state right now! His wife is on the verge of death in the ICU! And the internet... the internet is bullying him! They are spreading vicious, horrific lies about him pushing the woman he loves with all his heart off a bridge! It is eating him alive!"
Diana buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking violently.
"I fear the pressure finally broke him!" Diana sobbed to the national audience. " I fear he went up to that room to... to end his pain! I already lost all of my brothers! I cannot lose him too! Please, find him and break the door down!"
Aria’s mouth was hanging wide open.
She slowly turned her head to look at Damien. Even he looked completely, genuinely stunned.
"What the actual fuck," Damien muttered, the words slipping out in a rare mont of pure bewildernt.
"She is insane," Aria whispered in awe.
Aria dropped the remote and snatched her phone from the sofa. She opened Twitter.
#SaveDamien was the number one trending topic worldwide.
Multibillionaire Damien Sinclair Missing, Suspected of Committing Suicide Over Wife’s Condition was plastered across every single news aggregate account. There were already "RIP Damien" posts circulating with thousands of retweets.
"Oh my god," Aria gasped, her thumb flying across the screen. "Damien, look at this."
Aria watched in real-ti as Damien’s reputation did a complete 360-degree turn. The sa people who had wanted him arrested a few days ago were now lighting digital candles for him.
@PopCultureJunkie:We bullied a grieving widower to death. I am sick to my stomach. The internet is a toxic wasteland. RIP Demon King
@TrueCriGirlie:The guilt of losing her broke him. This is a modern Roo and Juliet tragedy. If he’s gone, I’m deleting my account.
@ToxicKitten:I could have fixed him but y’all pushed him over the edge!!
Aria clicked on a viral TikTok link posted on the tiline.
It was a black-and-white, slow-motion edit of Damien from the Vanity Fair interview. He was looking into the cara, saying, "I would burn this city to the ground to keep her warm."
Playing over the video was a heavily bass-boosted, reverb-heavy audio of Lana Del Rey’s Sumrti Sadness. The caption read: He loved her too much for this world.
"This is the most insane thing I have ever seen in my entire life," Aria wheezed, caught sowhere between a panic attack and a hysterical fit of laughter.
Damien dragged a hand down his face, a deep, guttural sigh of profound exhaustion leaving his chest.
"NYPD! CLEAR THE FLOOR! EVACUATE ALL GUESTS TO THE LOBBY!" a booming voice shouted through a gaphone right outside.
The aggressive thud of fists pounding on the doors down the hall began, moving rapidly toward their suite.
Aria froze. The blood drained entirely from her face.
If the NYPD breached this room to ’save’ a suicidal Damien, they were going to find him perfectly healthy, standing next to a very-much-alive Aria Sinclair, who was supposed to be lying brain-dead in a hospital bed. The grand, master PR stunt for the movie premiere would be instantly, catastrophically ruined.
Aria looked up at Damien, her erald eyes wide with panic as the boots stopped right outside their door.
"Damien," Aria whispered frantically. "What do we do?!"
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