Time moved in a slow, clinical rhythm. As the effects of the sedatives began to wane, the girl on the hospital bed shifted.

Janice was not a woman accustomed to deep, peaceful sleep. The moment the chemicals cleared her system, her lifelong hyper-vigilance took over.

She opened her eyes and braced her left hand to sit up. The movement sent a white-hot spike of agony through her wrist, the stitches tearing slightly. Janice let out a muffled grunt of pain.

But she wasn't a fragile, "gilded cage" woman. Pain was an old acquaintance. She ignored the sting, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and found a roll of bandages on the nightstand. With practiced, steady hands, she re-wrapped the wound herself.

Only once her body was "combat-ready" did she look around.

The VIP suite was clean, opulent, and radiated an "old-money" arrogance. She knew this room. She had been a guest of the Lancaster medical wing several times over the last few years.

So, she thought, he saved me again.

Janice ran a hand through her hair, which was currently a messy "bird's nest" of dark tangles. A wave of complex, irritating emotions washed over her. She stood up, her balance slightly off, and pulled open the door to the parlor.

"Woke up?"

The voice arrived like a cold breeze. Low,清 (chilly), and magnificent, with a base note of raw sex appeal that even the casual delivery couldn't hide.

Janice took a breath. There was only one man with that voice. Only one man with that attitude.

Damien Lancaster.

Was it luck or a curse? If she hadn't met Damien years ago, she would be dead. But because she had met him, her current existence felt like something worse than a terminal sentence.

"Yeah," she muttered, scratching her head. "Sorry. Looks like I'm a 'trouble-maker' for you again."

Damien let out a short, dry laugh. "You finally realized you're a nuisance?"

The impatience and suppressed rage in his tone were obvious. Janice didn't answer. She walked to the suite's private bar, grabbed a bottle of Tequila, and poured herself a heavy glass. Ignoring the fact that her body was a map of entry wounds and bruises that shouldn't be touched by alcohol, she tilted her head back and drained it.

The fire in her throat gave her the courage to face him.

"If you didn't want to handle me, you could have stayed home," she said, the alcohol making her reckless.

Damien slammed the file he was reading shut. The sound was like a gunshot. He tossed the documents aside, letting them scatter across the marble floor.

He rose and crossed the room in three predatory strides. Before Janice could blink, he was in her space. He caught both of her wrists, pinning them behind her back, and slammed her body against the bar counter. He didn't give a damn about her injuries.

"Not handle you? Hmm?"

He caught her chin in a bruising grip, forcing her to look into his pale gray eyes. They were brimming with a dark, focused malice.

"And then what? Let your father crawl to Julian again to beg for your life?" Damien's fingers tightened, his voice dropping into a lethal whisper. "You know Julian's character—he doesn't know how to walk away from a wreck. And you know his current status. He has exited this house. Dragging him into a mess like this has zero benefits for him. I've told you a dozen times, Janice: Stay away from the Lancaster name. Do you just treat my words as background noise?"

Janice went silent.

After a long heartbeat, she offered him a thin, jagged smile. It was a mask of "Luxury Noir" bravado hiding a soul in ruins.

"Stay away from the Lancasters?" she repeated quietly. "If you wanted that so badly, Damien... then you should have just let me die the first time."

Damien stared at her, his expression darkening into a bruised, ink-black shadow of suppressed violence.

Janice shrugged, her voice cracking with a sudden, bitter irony. "Tell me... how did I get so unlucky? I haven't even tasted the 'gentle' side of life yet, and I'm already buried under you."

----

OWNED BY THE DEVIL

Chapter 33: The Anniversary of Blood

How does one describe that meeting all those years ago?

To call it "destiny" would be a cliché, but what else could it have been? Yet, unlike a fairy tale, she was the only one who felt the shift in the universe. To her, it was the start of an obsession; to him, she was merely a minor interlude—a footnote not even worth remembering.

She could no longer recall the exact details of Damien's face that first time, only that the man who suddenly appeared before her was devastatingly beautiful. His expression was jarringly soft as he descended the mountain steps, move by measured move, in a dark tailored suit. He stopped before her and dropped to one knee to meet her eyes.

The men hunting her were screaming from the sidelines. "Hand the woman over! The boss said she saw the casino's secrets—she has to be liquidated!"

Damien didn't even look up. He didn't acknowledge the threat. He simply parted his elegant lips and uttered a single, chilling word.

"Vanish."

The lead thug lunged forward, ready to use force, but stopped dead. Two rows of men in black suits at the bottom of the steps had raised their weapons in a synchronized, lethal movement. They were waiting for a single command from the man on the stairs.

Anyone with eyes could see that this wasn't a group of hired thugs; this was a high-level security detail, trained with a precision that no ordinary person could command.

The pursuer's voice wavered. "Who... who the hell are you?"

Damien didn't answer.

Gideon, standing at the base of the stairs, answered for him with four words that carried the weight of an empire.

"The Lancaster Syndicate. Sovereign."

Damien Lancaster. So this was him.

Janice sat on the dirt, staring at him in a daze. The rumors described the Lancaster heir as a man of stone—ruthless, devoid of pity, a man who saw blood and slaughter every day and felt nothing.

But the Damien before her was as delicate and tender as a dream.

He looked at the bruises covering her skin and her torn clothes. After a long silence, he stripped off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders. While she remained frozen, he reached out and stroked her cheek.

"If you don't know how to protect your own body," he murmured, his voice a soft lure, "it won't matter how many times people save you."

He looked at her, his pale gray eyes momentarily clear. "...A girl shouldn't carry scars. It's never a good look."

The timing of love is a mystery.

That year, Janice was seventeen. She was tearing her life apart, fighting her powerful family for the right to enter the police academy and become a prosecutor. Her parents, her relatives—everyone gave her nothing but opposition. Not one of them had ever spoken a word of concern to her.

She never expected that the first person to offer her such a heart-stirring tenderness would be a beautiful stranger in the middle of a war zone.

She had been a fierce, volatile girl back then, but no amount of fire could withstand that brand of gentle affection.

Winter was closing in, and the seasonal winds were rising—unpredictable and harsh, much like life itself. In that moment, she overspent several decades' worth of emotion on a man named Damien Lancaster.

But she kept her distance. She had feelings, but she had propriety. She knew that when he saved her, he hadn't used a single ounce of his heart.

The cruel reality was delivered to her later by Julian.

"Janice, don't waste your heart on my brother," Julian had warned her. "Damien can be extreme when he loves a woman, but his lack of love is just as absolute."

Seeing the hurt in her eyes, Julian told her the truth. "Do you know why he saved you that day? It was his mother's death anniversary. Damien loathes seeing blood on that specific day. That's why he saved you. That's why he told them to vanish instead of just putting bullets in their heads."

Ah, she thought. So that was it.

It explained why he was at the mountain steps—his mother's final resting place was nearby. It explained why he had traded his usual ruthlessness for soft words. He simply hadn't returned from the ritual of mourning yet.

She shook her head, unable to grasp the logic. "How can a man be that tender when he doesn't love at all?"

Present Day.

Janice was pinned against the bar, the pressure against her chest making it hard to breathe. She looked into Damien's dark eyes and finally spoke the words she had been holding back for years.

"There's a question I've wanted to ask you for a long time."

Damien's face was a void. "Speak."

"Two years ago, there was a mid-level power in the underworld—the Liang Syndicate," Janice began, her voice steady. "They built their empire on high-interest loans and human trafficking. They were monstrous, but they were growing. People were afraid to touch them. Then, in a single night, the entire syndicate was liquidated. Their headquarters was burned to ash. No one ever found out who did it."

Damien's expression turned playful, his gaze becoming impossibly deep.

"Later, I found out something interesting," Janice continued. "Among the families ruined by the Liangs was the Clarke family. Their only daughter was forced into a club to pay off their debts. It was only because of her talent and the pity of the club owner that she kept her purity, working as a servant to pay the interest. That club owner was the only member of the Liang Syndicate allowed to live. And I remember very clearly: the night the Liangs were wiped out was the anniversary of your mother's death."

She looked him in the eye. "I don't have evidence, but I know. It was you, Damien. It was absolutely you."

Her voice was filled with a staggering certainty. "Your rule is 'no blood' on that day. Yet, for Mia, you did the one thing you never do. Why? What makes Mia Clarke worth that?"

Damien let go of her, straightening his posture. He offered a casual, dismissive smile.

"Secret."

Janice hissed through her teeth. "You're out of your mind."

Damien suddenly leaned forward, pinning her back into his controlled space. He braced his hands on either side of her on the bar, looming over her until they were eye-to-eye. His expression shifted in a heartbeat, becoming devastatingly beautiful and bone-chillingly seductive—part flirtation, part death threat. His eyes were ink-black pits.

"They must die," he whispered.

His voice was a soft, melodic thread, yet every word was saturated with violence.

"...They were seconds away from taking Mia from me. And I couldn't tolerate the idea of a single person who had ever hurt her still walking this earth."