Chapter 2 : Into the Lion's Den

Asher POV

I shouldn’t have had to pick her up.

Shouldn’t have had to explain.

She didn’t belong in my car.

Not in my world.

Not breathing the same air as my daughter.

And yet, here she was—Rowan Hayes—nestling Emma against her chest like a woman who’d been built for that very purpose, the child’s face pressed against her neck as if a safe place could be conjured by the skin of a stranger.

The SUV rolled through Manhattan traffic, city light splintering through tinted windows. From this side of the seat, I watched her face flicker in the glass—shaky hands, constricted throat, eyes flicking around the cabin, everywhere but toward me.

Good.

Fear was the right reaction.

“I didn’t kidnap her,” she said. “I saved her.”

I didn’t respond.

A man doesn’t stay alive in my line of work by listening to every sob story that lands on his desk—or his back seat. And yet something in the sound of her voice had tweaked that part of me that still remembered what it was to owe a favor.

“If you hadn’t,” I said at last, “she’d be dead.”

She blinked at me. Taken aback by the bluntness.

“Then maybe you could thank me?”

Almost—almost—I smiled. Gratitude was a language for men with softer mouths. “Don’t mistake my restraint for gratitude,” I told her. “Restraint keeps people alive.”

Her jaw clenched, defiance struggling past fear. There was something about that which piqued my interest more than it should have.

Most people couldn’t look me in the eye when I spoke. She could.

Emma mumbled something against her shoulder. I heard only fragments—words that still twisted my stomach when I caught them.

Don’t let her come back.

The thought sent a chill skittering up my spine. Rowan looked down at Emma with real concern—something unpracticed, instinctive. Not deliberate. It was rare to see anyone try to reach for my daughter with anything other than an agenda.

“Who is she talking about?” Rowan asked softly.

I didn’t answer.

Some truths were too ugly to share with the innocent.

We passed beneath Vance Tower, the security gate swallowing the car. I stared through the windshield as we dipped below the streets, into shadow—steel, concrete, the drone of cameras. My kingdom.

Emma’s hand tightened on Rowan’s blouse. Her weariness made her small again. I’d seen too many nights like this, terror devouring her sleep from the inside out.

The car stopped. My guards opened the doors.

Rowan didn’t budge.

“Out,” I said.

She flinched but complied, shifting Emma carefully in her arms as if she already understood what that child meant to me.

The air in the garage was cooler down here, faintly scented with oil and ozone. The echo of our footsteps followed us to the private elevator.

“You’re coming with me,” I said.

Her head snapped toward me. “You mean… upstairs?”

“I don’t leave my daughter with strangers. And you, Miss Hayes, are a stranger.”

Her breath hitched, but she didn’t argue again. Clever woman.

Inside the elevator, I keyed in a code that would take us to the penthouse. The doors slid shut, cutting us off from the world. For a moment, there was only the hum of machinery and the soft sound of Emma’s breathing against her chest.

Rowan’s reflection in the glass panel was ghost-pale, but her eyes—green, wary—met mine directly.

Most people folded under that. She didn’t.

Intriguing.

“You’re not safe here,” she said suddenly. “I saw the way people looked at her outside. Someone needs to—”

“You’re in no position to tell me what my daughter needs,” I said.

But her words stayed with me nonetheless.

The elevator chimed. When the doors slid open, we stepped into my world—a high-rise fortress of glass and silence, the city spread below us like a map of conquered territory. Rowan stopped, taking it all in. I caught the slight tremble in her shoulders, the awe, the fear.

Emma stirred. “Are we home?”

“Home,” I said quietly and looked at Rowan. “That depends.”

She didn’t ask what I meant. Clever again.

I led them down the hall. Security cameras blinked in every corner. Emma’s room sat at the far end, beyond two coded locks and one reinforced door. When Rowan crossed the threshold, I saw her face change—at first impressed, then wary. Luxury could be its own kind of prison.

She laid Emma on the bed, staying at her side until the child’s breathing evened out. I remained, silent, until she finally turned to me.

“She’s been having nightmares,” Rowan said. “She said something about not letting someone come back. Does that mean what I think it does?”

“She dreams,” I said. “Dreams are just noise.”

“Not that kind of noise,” she said, eyes narrowing. “That was fear.”

That flash of bravery again—reckless, beautiful.

She had no idea what kind of man she was dealing with.

“You don’t know this world,” I told her quietly. “And you shouldn’t want to.”

“Maybe not.” She lifted her chin. “But your daughter’s terrified. If you think I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that, you’re wrong.”

I stepped closer before I thought better of it. The air between us changed.

She didn’t flinch.

There it was—that spark I hadn’t felt in years. A woman too brave for her own good, standing in front of a man she had no business provoking. The kind that makes you forget what lines are for.

My gaze dropped to the faint pulse at her throat. It throbbed too fast. So did mine.

I forced myself a step back.

“Get some rest,” I said. “You’ll stay here until I decide what to do with you.”

Her mouth opened as if to protest, but she caught my expression and thought better of it. She turned back to Emma, running a hand through the child’s hair. The gesture was tender, practiced, wrong—it belonged to someone who’d already decided to stay.

When she finally looked up again, I was still watching her.

“Why me?” she asked softly. “You could have anyone take care of her.”

“I could,” I said, voice rough. “But she asked for you.”

And for reasons I didn’t want to analyze, that was enough.