Damian's POV)
The storm had broken by the time Damian Rivera left the club. The air outside was damp and cool, tinged with the lingering scent of rain and asphalt. Streetlights reflected in shallow puddles, fractured halos rippling with every gust of wind. Behind him, the bass of Obsidian still throbbed faintly, a pulse in the veins of Millbrook's forgotten edge.
He drew in a long breath, filling his lungs with the night, grounding himself in its silence. But his mind refused to quiet.
Her.
He hadn't expected her. Not here. Not now.
Five years of distance should have erased her from this place, should have burned the memory of her out of Millbrook's bones. But when she had stepped into Obsidian, the room had shifted, as though it recognized her before he had.
Elena Vasquez.
Her name was a curse and a promise both.
Damian leaned against his black sedan parked beneath a crooked streetlamp, letting the cool metal at his back anchor him. He lit a cigarette, the flame momentarily illuminating the sharp lines of his face before sinking back into shadow. He inhaled, then exhaled slowly, watching smoke curl upward like restless spirits.
He had built his life on control of men, of power, of his own impulses. He commanded silence when he entered a room. He cultivated loyalty, bred fear, and bent chaos to his will. He did not allow himself distractions.
And yet Elena had walked into that club and reminded him that control was a fragile illusion.
He had felt her before he'd seen her.
The shift in the crowd.
The spark of recognition in his chest, visceral and uninvited.
It had been like catching the scent of smoke in a locked room you knew the fire existed even before you found its source.
When his gaze finally landed on her, everything inside him had gone taut. She didn't belong in that place. Not with her sharp heels clicking nervously against the worn floor, not with her city polish failing to hide the fracture lines beneath. She looked like someone who had forgotten how to breathe, and yet the entire club seemed to breathe with her presence.
Damian's jaw tightened. He hated the way his body responded to her without permission the low burn in his blood, the tightening of his chest, the way her uncertainty made him want to tear down every wall she had built just to see what lived underneath.
He had thought time would dull it. But time, it seemed, had only sharpened her edges.
He flicked ash into the gutter, eyes narrowing as a car passed at the end of the street. He knew better than to linger in memory. Memory was a weakness. And yet…
He replayed the moment she'd glanced over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the crowd, landing nowhere and everywhere at once. She hadn't seen him. But she had felt him. He was certain of it. The way her body stiffened, the way her pulse had visibly quickened at her throat it was instinct, primal recognition.
A dark satisfaction curled low in his stomach. She might pretend she had left Millbrook, that she had left him behind, but her body hadn't forgotten. No matter what promises she'd broken, no matter how far she'd run, Elena was still tethered. And tethers could be pulled.
Damian ground out the cigarette and slid into the driver's seat of his car. He didn't start the engine immediately. Instead, he sat in the quiet, fingers drumming once against the leather steering wheel.
He could drive away. Pretend tonight hadn't happened.
But he wouldn't.
Not when the universe had dropped her back into his orbit like an offering.
His phone buzzed on the passenger seat. He glanced at the name flashing across the screen Victor. He let it ring twice before answering.
"She was there tonight," Victor said without preamble. His voice was rough, tinted with both curiosity and caution.
"I know." Damian's tone was even, though his knuckles whitened against the wheel.
"Thought she'd never come back."
"So did I."
A beat of silence. Then Victor asked the question Damian had been circling since the moment Elena stepped into Obsidian. "What are you going to do?"
Damian leaned back, eyes closing briefly. He could still see her, framed by the haze of neon and smoke, her dark hair falling over her shoulders as if it belonged to him to touch. His jaw flexed.
"I don't know yet," he admitted. And that unsettled him more than anything else.
Damian Rivera always knew. Always planned. Always chose the terms. But Elena Vasquez had a way of slipping past his defenses, making him react instead of control. And reactions were dangerous.
"Careful, boss," Victor said quietly. "The past has teeth."
Damian ended the call without replying. He didn't need warnings. He lived in the company of teeth.
He drove slowly through Millbrook, the roads familiar, the town unchanged in all the ways that mattered. It was still small, still hungry for gossip, still too eager to suffocate those who didn't belong. But Damian had carved his place here with fire and steel, reshaping the town's underbelly until it bent to his will.
And now Elena had returned. Not for him. Not yet. But fate didn't care about intentions. Fate was cruel and deliberate.
He parked half a block away from Rosa Vasquez's house, killing the engine before the headlights could sweep across the porch. From the shadows, he could see the faint glow of a lamp in the upstairs window. Her room.
Damian sat in silence, watching. The image of her silhouetted against the curtains, pacing, restless, tugged at something buried deep in his chest. She looked as if she carried ghosts on her shoulders, and maybe she did. Rosa's death, Marcus's presence, the weight of a town that never forgot.
But he knew better. Elena carried more than ghosts. She carried unfinished fire.
And he wanted to be the one to ignite it.
He stayed until the lamp finally flicked off, the house sinking into darkness. Only then did he lean back in his seat, exhaling a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Patience, he reminded himself. He had mastered patience. He had built empires on it. Elena would not undo him with a single night.
And yet…
When her silhouette had disappeared, a hollow ache spread in his chest.
It had been five years. Five years of silence, of control, of burying the raw hunger she had once unleashed in him. And in a single night, without a word, she had undone it all.
Damian's lips curved into the faintest, most dangerous of smiles.
Let her think she had escaped.
Let her cling to her walls and her distance.
He had time.
And time was the sharpest weapon of all.