The dim glow of night pressed against the glass towers of P City, thick and oppressive like the breath before a storm. From his office high above Navarro Corporation, Damian Sinclair stood motionless before the tall window, his faint reflection dissolving into the ink-black sky.
Down below, cars crawled through traffic, umbrellas bloomed in the drizzle, and people moved like aimless shadows. But his gaze sought only one.
There—by the curb, near the flickering lamppost —stood Amara Castellanos.
Even from this distance, Damian recognized her. The way she hugged her arms close to her chest, as though trying to hold herself together. The way the wind tangled her long black hair against her damp cheeks. She looked so small beneath the heavy sky, so fragile that even the rain seemed cruel for touching her.
He'd seen her in every possible mood—awkward laughter over spilled coffee, nervous smiles in meetings, quiet apologies that made his chest ache—but never like this.
Today, her eyes were lifeless.
The Amara who used to glance up with hesitant hope now stared at nothing, as if her world had stopped spinning. The gentle warmth that had always clung to her, the unspoken light she carried, had been extinguished.
And Damian felt something cold and violent awaken in him.
His fingers pressed hard against the glass, his knuckles whitening.
He didn't need to guess what had happened. He'd seen the looks in the office corridors, heard the whispers. Leila and her little pack of sycophants—spiteful, jealous, cruel—had turned their venom on Amara again.
He had been patient before. Too patient.
He'd warned them once, subtly. A sharp glance in the hallway. A quiet meeting with HR that miraculously ended their gossip for a week. He'd even told himself that Amara wouldn't want him to interfere, that she'd prefer kindness over intimidation.
But the sight of her standing there, broken and trembling—
No.
This was the last straw.
He reached for his phone and dialled a familiar number.
"Find them," he said, his tone low, precise. "Leila. Jonah. Mika. All of them."
The voice on the other end responded instantly, respectful, cautious. "Yes, Young Master. Should I—"
"You know what to do." Damian's voice cut through the air like a blade. "Quiet. Discreet. No traces. And…" His jaw tightened. "No one must know. Especially her."
"Yes, sir."
He hung up, but his hand lingered on the phone for a moment longer, trembling faintly before he clenched it into a fist.
Below, Amara stepped onto the pavement and began to walk, her movements slow, uncertain, as if the city itself might offer direction. Her small figure drifted through pools of streetlight, swallowed gradually by the night. For a long moment, Damian just stood there, watching her disappear into the crowd.
A pair of men followed at a distance, silent and unobtrusive—Damian's sentinels, tasked with ensuring she made it home safely.
"Protect her," he murmured, though no one could hear. "No matter what it takes."
The words were soft, but they carried the weight of an oath.
The rain began to fall harder, streaking the window like silver tears. Damian turned away at last, pacing slowly through the vast silence of his office.
He had always known this day would come. The day he'd stop pretending to be harmless. The day he'd stop hiding behind that polite smile and reveal what he really was—what his family had raised him to be.
The heir to the Sinclair name.
A man who didn't need to lift a hand to destroy someone.
A man whose power existed in whispers, in fear, in obedience.
But Amara… she wasn't supposed to see that side of him.
When he first met her, she had looked at him without calculation, without expectation. To her, he wasn't Damian Sinclair, heir to an empire—he was just a quiet, reliable colleague. Someone she could talk to without fear.
That had disarmed him.
It had made him human again.
He could still remember the first time she'd smiled at him—soft, unguarded, a little shy. He'd felt something in his chest shift, something long buried beneath years of control.
Now that light was gone, stolen from her by cruelty and mockery.
And he would take it back.
He would make them regret every word they'd ever spoken.
Damian sank into the leather chair behind his desk, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together. The silence in the room felt suffocating.
He should have gone to her instead, comforted her, offered kindness. That was what she deserved. That was what she would have wanted.
But he couldn't.
Because the anger inside him wasn't something he could tame anymore.
He had spent years learning how to smile through blood and betrayal. How to talk like a gentleman while holding the power to destroy lives with a signature. He had mastered the art of restraint.
But Amara's pain…
It shattered every ounce of that discipline.
She had been humiliated in front of others, mocked for her background, pitied for her love for Kael. She had endured it all in silence. And now, even Kael—once the centre of her heart—had broken it without mercy.
Damian's voice was low, barely above a whisper.
"I warned him," he said. "I warned Kael that if he ever made her cry…"
The words trailed off, swallowed by the hum of the rain.
There were lines even he couldn't cross—not yet. Kael Navarro was still his superior at Navarro Corporation, and more importantly, Amara would never forgive him if he laid a hand on Kael. That boundary mattered. But the employees who had mocked her? They were fair game.
He would start there.
He stood, straightening his jacket, his reflection in the glass like a darker version of himself. The eyes staring back at him were not gentle. They burned with quiet, controlled rage.
Damian Sinclair had two sides—the public one, calm and composed, and the one few had ever seen. The side that whispered threats in boardrooms and toppled empires without raising his voice.
Tonight, that side would awaken.
He crossed to his desk and retrieved a folder—a list of names, photos, backgrounds. His assistant had left it there earlier, expecting him to review company matters. Now it would serve another purpose.
Each name was a face he remembered from the office—the ones who laughed when Amara walked by, who whispered behind her back, who sneered when she spoke Kael's name.
He flipped through the pages slowly, deliberately, his thumb pausing over Leila's smiling ID photo.
His jaw clenched.
"I warned you," he whispered. "I told you to stay away from her."
The sound of his phone buzzing broke the silence. He answered without hesitation.
"They've been located," came the report. "We can proceed within the hour."
"Good." Damian's voice was steady, precise. "Use the old factory. Make sure it's secure."
"Yes, Young Master."
He ended the call.
For a moment, he remained still, listening to the rain's rhythmic tapping against the window. The calm before the storm.
Then, he whispered the same words again—softly, almost tenderly, as though they were a prayer rather than a threat.
"No one must know. Especially her."
He turned off the lights in his office and walked out, leaving only the storm behind.
That night, as thunder rolled across the city, Damian's cars moved quietly through the streets, their headlights cutting through the rain.
Seven names.
Seven targets.
Seven lessons to be learned.
And high above the city, in her small apartment, Amara lay unconscious on the floor, the room dim and silent around her. She was unaware of the shadows moving on her behalf—unaware that the man she trusted most had just crossed a line he could never return from.