Rain hammered the clinic windows like a barrage of small, metallic teeth, threatening to shatter the glass that separated Mercy Street Clinic from the decaying Chicago pavement outside.

"I don't have any ledger!" Selene hissed, trying to pull away from his touch, but Damen held her firmly against the wall, his heavy frame boxing her in.

"You don't have it physically," Damen said, his voice dropping to a low, seductive rumble that vibrated through her chest. "But your clinic’s cloud backup system auto-synced at midnight. Before the fire destroyed your physical servers, the encrypted file was transferred to your personal cloud drive. The drive associated with your medical license."

Selene’s eyes widened. "My cloud backup... my phone automatically syncs with it every night!"

"Exactly," Damen said. "Which means right now, in the palm of your hand, you possess the operational blueprint of the largest criminal organization in North America."

"Take it!" Selene said instantly, pulling her phone from her pocket and trying to hand it to him. "Take it, delete it, give it to the police, do whatever you want! Just leave me and Ivy out of this!"

Damen looked down at the phone, then slowly met her eyes again. "If I take it and hand it to the authorities, Rostov will kill you anyway to ensure you haven't read it or made copies. In my world, loose ends are buried six feet deep. The only way you survive this, Selene, is if we use the ledger to crush Rostov before he touches you."

Selene stared at him, caught in the hypnotic intensity of his gaze. "We?"

"We," Damen repeated. "You need my protection, my weapons, and my men. I need your digital authentication code to unlock the medical server's encryption layer. We are partners now, Doctor. Like it or not."

Before Selene could reply, the penthouse's internal alarm system chimed softly. Red light flashed along the baseboards.

Viktor burst into the hallway, his weapon drawn. "Boss! We’ve got perimeter breaches on the low-rise elevator shaft. Heavy tactical teams. It’s Rostov’s men. They bypassed the main lobby security!"

Damen didn't panic. His expression transformed instantly from smooth charisma to lethal precision. He reached behind his back, pulled a sleek, silenced pistol from his waistband, and handed a small, silver tracking device to Selene.

"Go to the safe room behind the bookshelf in the library," Damen ordered her, his voice absolute. "Take Ivy. Do not open the door for anyone except me or Viktor."