Third POV limited
The moment the Rolls Royce stopped at the curb of the club, Aurora stepped out after Saint opened the door for her, his hand settling at the small of her back, warm and calloused. She exhaled slowly, her grip tightening around the Chanel bag the nanny had brought to her room, her cheeks dusted with makeup that wasn’t heavy but enough to bring out more of her bubbly face.
This was the same club where she’d gotten drunk, where her nightmare had begun, the Kingdom Palace. She turned her head toward Saint as the door slid open, and his eyes were already on her, like the same thought running through her mind was running through his. Music boomed from the speakers, a woman barely dressed grinding against an older man’s lap. She turned her gaze away, only to catch another pair doing the same thing in the corner.
"You really don’t have to look at them," Saint whispered, bending his head slightly to reach her ear.
"They’re all over the place," she whispered back, though it came out closer to a shout over the music.
"Then let me carry you," he suggested, but Aurora immediately shook her head in disagreement, brows raised, cheeks flushed.
No guards flanked them, trailing three steps behind. No familiar faces stood at the exits the way they usually did whenever he left the mansion. Just the two of them, exactly as the message had demanded.
"You’re tense," Aurora murmured, glancing sideways at him as they moved through the crowd toward the VIP section, his grip at her waist tightening slightly with every step.
"I don’t like walking in blind," Saint answered, eyes scanning every face they passed, every exit, every shadow that could be hiding something he hadn’t accounted for. "Stay close."
She nodded her head, his hand still wrapped around her waist.
They were led to a private room at the back, the music dulling to a distant hum the moment the door shut behind them, sealing out everything but the low hum of the air conditioning and three unfamiliar men already waiting inside.
None of them matched the anxious voice Milo had described over the phone.
They looked Saint and Aurora over with scrutiny, like they were trying to see beyond the facade.
"Before we bring him out," the tallest of the three said, arms crossed, eyes flicking between them, "we need to confirm something."
"Confirm what?" Saint’s voice had gone flat, dangerous, the kind of tone Aurora had learned meant he was one wrong word away from losing his patience entirely.
"That she’s actually your wife. Not hired for the night to make this look convincing." His eyes settled on Aurora, assessing. "How did you two meet?"
Saint’s jaw tightened. "That’s not your business."
"It is tonight." The man’s mouth curved slightly, unbothered by the warning in Saint’s voice. "How long have you been married? What does she like? What do you like about her? Why does she trust you, a man half the city’s afraid to even look at directly?"
Aurora felt her pulse climb, her hands curling at her sides. These weren’t business questions. At this point, her brain couldn’t grasp the idea behind her coming with Saint.
Saint said nothing, jaw locked, clearly weighing whether to turn around and walk out entirely, consequences be damned.
"Prove it, then," the man pressed, leaning back against the wall like he had all the time in the world. "Kiss her, or tell us something only a husband would know about his wife."
Saint’s hand twitched at his side, but he didn’t move. His memory flashed back to when he’d pinned her against the wall in his feral mind. He turned his face toward her, his eyes fixed on her lip, staring at it, while Aurora turned to face him, nervously biting down on her bottom lip.
Before the silence could stretch any further, before it could curdle into something that gave them exactly the doubt they were fishing for, Aurora spoke.
"He hates when I laugh too easily around people who aren’t him." The words left her before she’d fully thought them through, surprising even herself with how naturally they came. "He pretends he doesn’t notice, but he does. He gets this look, like he’s annoyed at himself for caring in the first place."
The room went still.
Saint turned to look at her, something unreadable passing behind his eyes, dark and searching. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. She hadn’t even fully realized she’d noticed that about him until the words were already hanging in the air between them.
For a moment, nobody in the room spoke.
"That’ll do," the tall man finally said, stepping back and gesturing toward a side door.
The man who walked through it wasn’t what Aurora expected. He looked barely older than her, thin, hollow-eyed, dark circles carved deep beneath them, hands shaking as he clutched a laptop bag against his chest like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
"Please," he said the second he saw Saint, voice already cracking. "I didn’t mean for it to go this far, I swear to you."
"You breached my system," Saint said, voice low and even, more terrifying for how calm it stayed. "How much did you take?"
The man’s throat bobbed hard. "Enough. Enough to cause problems if it got out, if it reached the wrong hands."
Saint’s expression hardened as he stepped closer with each word. "Why?"
"My sister." The words tumbled out fast, desperate, spilling over each other. "She’s sick. Really sick. The treatment costs more than I’ll make in ten years at my job, and I couldn’t just watch her die because I didn’t have enough. I thought, if I found something valuable enough inside your systems, I could ask for compensation quietly, and no one would have to get hurt. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I didn’t even know who you really were until it was already too late to turn back."
"You threatened to hand it over to the authorities," Saint said, closing the last of the distance between them.
"I panicked. I didn’t know what else to do, I swear I didn’t." The man’s voice broke entirely, tears already tracking down his face. "I’ll delete everything, every file, every copy. I won’t tell anyone, I swear on my sister’s life. I’ll work for you if I have to, anything you need, just please, let me..."
Saint pulled the gun from his jacket in one fluid, practiced motion, leveling it at the man’s chest without a flicker of hesitation.
The room seemed to shrink around the sound of the safety clicking off.
The man froze completely, tears spilling freely down his face now, hands raised uselessly in front of him like they could somehow stop a bullet, like they ever could.
"Please," he whispered, barely audible over his own ragged breathing. "Please, I made a mistake. I know I did. I know."
Aurora’s eyes moved from the gun to the man’s trembling hands, then slowly back to Saint, taking in the hard, unreadable line of his profile. She remained quiet.
She just looked at him, her expression pleading with him wordlessly.
Saint noticed, but he still didn’t lower his hand.
"If you let me live," the man said, voice shaking so hard the words barely held together, "I’ll prove my loyalty. Whatever you need, whatever you want from me. I’ll disappear if that’s what you want. I just don’t want to die tonight. Please."
Aurora kept her eyes on Saint, saying nothing, expecting nothing, her heart hammering loud enough she was certain he could hear it too.
Saint’s finger stayed steady against the trigger.
Then, slowly, his gaze shifted away from the man in front of him, away from the warehouse, the leak, everything he’d spent twenty years building and protecting, and settled instead on the woman sitting behind him.
For the first time all night, he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Some part of him didn’t want her to witness the heartless side of him.
"Umm. Desperation can make you do the most crazy things," she said, her gaze fixed on the man whose glasses had slipped slightly down his nose.
"How much is the treatment?" Saint asked, tucking the gun back into his jacket.