The first time Naomi Carter realized Daniel Han had been lying to her, she was standing barefoot in his penthouse with rainwater dripping from her hair and a loaded handgun resting six feet away on a marble counter.

Naomi didn't sleep that night. She lay in the massive king-sized bed in Daniel’s guest room, listening to the rain beat a steady rhythm against the reinforced glass. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the driver in the alley lighting his cigarette beneath Daniel’s penthouse.

At 3:00 AM, the penthouse was completely silent.

Naomi slid out of bed, her bare feet making no sound against the polished hardwood floor. She wore an oversized black t-shirt Daniel had left for her and a pair of running shorts.

She crept out into the hallway. The master bedroom door was half-open, casting a narrow strip of light across the floor. She peeked inside. Daniel was asleep on his back, his shirt off, revealing the expansive black ink of dragon wings stretching across his back and shoulders, crisscrossed by white silver scars from old knife wounds and bullet grazes. Even in sleep, his jaw was clenched, his brow furrowed as if fighting unseen wars in his dreams.

Naomi pulled her gaze away and moved quietly down the private elevator hall. She needed proof. She couldn't accuse a man as dangerous as Daniel Han based on a hunch and a distant reflection in a glass window.

She pressed the elevator button. The private lift required a keycard, but Daniel had left his spare set sitting on the marble counter near the doorway. She slid the silver fob into the slot. The elevator chimed softly and descended straight to the private underground parking garage reserved exclusively for the penthouse suite.

The elevator doors slid open with a soft hiss, revealing a brightly lit, cavernous concrete garage filled with five high-end vehicles: two armored SUVs, a classic Shelby Cobra, a sleek Mercedes, and a midnight-black Bentley.

Naomi stepped out, her bare feet cold against the concrete. She moved stealthily between the vehicles, looking for the building’s security control office tucked into the rear corner of the garage.

The security door was locked, but the glass window beside it was slightly cracked to let air circulate around the server racks. Inside, a wall of twelve high-definition monitors displayed live feeds from every angle of the building, the perimeter streets, and the lower parking levels.

Naomi pulled a thin hairpin from her hair, picked at the latch of the window, and reached her arm inside to unlock the door handle. The latch clicked open. She slipped inside the room, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

She sat in the leather operator chair and pulled the primary surveillance interface toward her. She navigated to the archive logs for the past forty-eight hours, filtering by the cameras covering her apartment building in Capitol Hill and the Fairmont Hotel drive court.

She found the footage from two days ago.

She fast-forwarded to the moment the black-and-white photograph was dropped on her windshield.

The camera zoomed in on the figure approaching her Honda Civic. The man wore a plain grey hoodie, but when he turned to walk back to his vehicle, the security lamp caught his face clearly.

It was Marcus—Daniel’s head of personal security, the same broad-shouldered man who had been standing beside Daniel in the alley two weeks ago.

Naomi’s blood turned to liquid nitrogen.

She pulled up the camera feed from the Fairmont Hotel from three hours ago. She watched the tall man in the heavy coat follow her into the lobby. She saw him step around the corner, pull out an encrypted satellite phone, and dial a number.

A split second later, the timestamp on the video matched the exact second Naomi’s phone had rung when she called Daniel.

Daniel hadn't been rushing to rescue her from an unseen enemy. He had ordered Marcus to trail her, to drop the photos, to terrify her into calling him so he could play the savior.

He had manufactured a war just so she would seek refuge in his arms.

“Looking for something, Ms. Carter?” a voice rasped from the doorway.