Chapter 3 - The King of Ruin
Damien Rowe did not walk into rooms; he arrived like an inevitable catastrophe.
The dining hall doors didn't just open; they were shattered off their hinges by the sheer force of the men behind them. The room, which had been filled with the chatter of the wealthy, went deathly quiet. A hundred people looked toward the entrance, their champagne glasses frozen halfway to their lips.
Damien stood in the center of the doorway. He looked exactly the same, yet entirely different. He was thinner, his cheekbones sharper, his eyes burning with a cold, terrifying light that stripped away the vanity of the room. He didn't look at the Headmaster. He didn't look at the terrified students.
He looked at the floor.
He saw Maren.
For a heartbeat, the man who had ordered the deaths of rival syndicates, who had dismantled empires with a phone call, simply stopped breathing. He saw the stained uniform. He saw the terror in her eyes. He saw the way she was curled around her stomach.
He moved faster than the eye could follow.
He was beside her in an instant, his hands—those hands that had once held her with such gentleness—hovering over her, afraid to touch her, afraid she was a hallucination.
"Maren," he breathed. It was a broken, jagged sound.
"Damien?" she whispered, her voice barely a thread. "You’re dead."
"I am death," he whispered, his eyes shifting to the room. The transition from lover to monster was instantaneous. "And everyone who hurt you is going to understand exactly what that means."
He turned his head slowly, scanning the room. Chloe Ashford was still standing there, her phone dropped on the floor, her face draining of color as she realized that her father’s donor status meant nothing to the man currently looming over her.
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Damien signaled once.
His men—hired wolves, men who lacked even a drop of mercy—stepped forward. The gala was over. The destruction had begun.
