The interior of the sleek, midnight-black Maserati smelled faintly of expensive leather and Damien’s sandalwood cologne.

Aria sat in the passenger seat, twirling a small, crushed white rose between her fingers that she had plucked from the botanical gardens. With her other hand, she was scrolling through the photos on her phone, a soft, amused smile playing on her lips.

She paused on the last photo Richard had taken.

It was a cinematic masterpiece. The sunlight, the fountain, the romantic dip. But right at the bottom of the frame, Damien’s hand was clamped firmly onto her ass, and Aria’s face was captured mid-squeal, her eyes wide with shock.

A furious, bright red blush rose to Aria’s cheeks.

She lowered the phone, a curious thought invading her brain. She glanced sideways at her husband. His jaw was set, his golden eyes focused on the mid-afternoon Manhattan traffic, his large hands resting comfortably on the steering wheel.

’Would he really have done it?’ Aria wondered, her heart executing a tiny, frantic flutter. ’If I didn’t remind him that I was on my period... would he have actually bent me over a shrub?’

She stared at the sharp, aristocratic cut of his profile. The terrifyingly serious look in his eyes right before they left the park suggested that he absolutely, one hundred percent would have risked a public indecency charge just to prove a point.

Damien must have felt the weight of her stare.

He glanced over at her, raising a single, questioning eyebrow.

Aria’s face instantly burned even hotter. She violently whipped her head away, staring rigidly out the passenger window to avoid his gaze.

"What are you thinking about?" Damien asked, his voice a low, perceptive rumble.

"Nothing!" Aria coughed, adjusting the AC vents on the dashboard and blasting the freezing air directly onto her flaming cheeks. "Just... thinking about work!"

She desperately scrambled for a topic change to deflect the sexual tension.

"I was wondering," Aria cleared her throat, trying to sound professional. "Did Richard ever find the pen? The one Jade gave him?"

The relaxed, comfortable posture Damien had been maintaining evaporated almost immediately. His broad shoulders tensed. His grip on the leather steering wheel tightened so severely his knuckles turned white.

"He found it," Damien answered, his voice dropping into a cold, flat register.

Aria leaned forward, anticipating the drop. "And?"

"Nothing," Damien gritted out, a muscle feathering in his jaw. "No micro-transmitters. No hidden recording devices. It was just a cheap plastic pen."

Aria let out a sigh, sinking back into the bucket seat. "See? I told you. Jade is innocent. She’s just a sweet girl who has a crush on my bodyguard. Not everything is a cartel conspiracy, Damien."

"This is not good news, Aria," Damien corrected sharply, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror. "It would have been better if the pen was bugged. Because now, we are back to square one. We have no leads as to how that audio leaked."

The victorious little smile fell from Aria’s face.

He was right.

A dark, suffocating wave of frustration settled over her chest. They hadn’t progressed at all. She had found out that the ledger with the evidence against Lydia was stolen by the people who kidnapped her, but who exactly are they? Who released the audio to try and assassinate her career? What was her mother’s actual connection to the French mafia? And why had the Vipers been so quiet?

The questions were endless, a tangled, suffocating knot in her brain.

Aria was getting incredibly frustrated. She was trying to be cautious, but playing dead and staying hidden felt like they were just sitting ducks. They were giving the enemy endless amounts of time to plan their next move.

’Am I being paranoid?’ Aria asked herself, rubbing her temples. ’No. I need to be paranoid. I literally almost died.’

She looked out the window, trying to organize her thoughts, when she noticed the street signs.

Aria frowned, sitting up straighter.

"Damien," Aria pointed toward the windshield. "You just missed the turn for Sinclair Tower. Where are we going?"

They were supposed to be heading back to the penthouse. But the Maserati was currently merging onto a highway that led out of the city limits.

Damien kept his eyes fixed on the road.

"We are going to the safe house," Damien stated casually. "To see your father."

Aria blinked, completely bewildered. "Why? And the hospital is in the opposite direction."

"He isn’t in the hospital," Damien replied, his voice devoid of emotion.

He proceeded to casually get her up to speed. He explained how Raymond Vale had escaped the ICU the previous night, stolen a vehicle, and had been intercepted by Sinclair operatives on a lonely stretch of road. He detailed how Raymond had been beaten to a pulp by an unknown assailant, and how her father had been raving deliriously about needing to tell Aria something important before he passed out from his injuries.

Aria’s jaw literally unhinged.

Her emerald eyes blew wide, staring at her husband as if he had just grown a second head.

"Wait," Aria gasped, her voice trembling as the shock rapidly flash-boiled into pure fury. "When did you find this out?"

"Early this morning," Damien answered smoothly.

Aria exploded.

"Are you kidding me?!" Aria shrieked, twisting her body to glare fully at him. "You knew my father was battered, bleeding, and holding information that could possibly give us some leads, and you took me to a bistro?! We toured a fucking garden?!"

Damien didn’t flinch at her volume. "You needed to decompress. You had a very stressful morning with the media. I wanted you to eat and relax."

"I am not a fragile porcelain doll, Damien!" Aria yelled, slapping her hand against the dashboard. "I don’t need a ’nice morning’! I need answers! They tried to kill him! What if the Vipers found out I was the mystery benefactor who cleared his medical bills?! We should have been interrogating him hours ago!"

"I am handling it," Damien said coldly.

"No, you are hoarding information!" Aria fired back, her chest heaving with livid indignation. "I demanded that you treat me like a partner! Stop keeping things from me!"

She expected him to argue. She expected him to snap back, to demand she lower her voice, to tell her he was just protecting her.

But Damien didn’t do any of that.

He remained completely unapologetic and icy. In fact, he completely tuned her anger out.

His broad shoulders suddenly went rigid. His posture shifted from casual to fiercely predatory. His golden eyes were completely hijacked by the rearview mirror, tracking something she couldn’t see.

"Damien, are you even listening to me?!" Aria demanded, frustrated by his silence.

Damien ignored her. He reached out and aggressively tapped the wide digital display on the Maserati’s dashboard, pulling up the GPS tracker that linked to their security detail escorting them.

The screen glowed green with the convoy’s coordinates.

And then, the screen violently glitched. A burst of digital static tore across the display.

The tracker went pitch black and read:

NO SIGNAL FOUND.

Damien’s jaw locked into stone. "They’re jamming the signals."

Aria’s anger morphed into confusion. "What?"

"The convoy changed course," Damien muttered to himself, his mind rapidly calculating the horrific variables. "They diverted the detail. The road behind us is blocked off."

It was a meticulously, beautifully thought-out trap.

Aria looked in her side mirror.

A battered, black truck had seamlessly merged onto the empty stretch of highway right behind them. It was rapidly gaining speed.

Damien’s hand flew to the gear shifter. He slammed the Maserati into manual mode.

"Hold on," Damien ordered.

He floored the accelerator. The twin-turbo V8 engine shrieked like a dying animal as the G-force violently threw Aria back into her bucket seat. The supercar tore down the lonely stretch of road, the speedometer climbing at a terrifying, blurring rate.

Aria’s breathing turned ragged, her hands gripping the edges of her seat for dear life as she stared at the truck gaining on them in the mirrors.

"Damien, what is going on?!" Aria panicked, her eyes shining with unshed tears of fright.

Damien didn’t look at her. His focus was absolute, his face a mask of terrifying calm.

"Aria," Damien said, his voice steady despite the fact they were pushing a hundred and forty miles an hour. "I need you to hold on with both hands."

"I am holding on!" Aria cried out. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

"Aria," Damien repeated softly. "Do you hear that?"

Aria froze.

She strained her ears, forcing her brain to listen past the deafening roar of the engine, the shriek of the tires, and the wind whipping against the chassis.

And then, she heard it.

Coming from somewhere deep inside the undercarriage of the car, entirely distinct and separate from the mechanical noise, was a faint, rhythmic sound.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Aria’s emerald eyes blew wide with horror.

There was no mistaking it.

It was a bomb.