The Mafia Boss Ordered His Secretary to Pretend She Loved Him, Then She Whispered That Someone Was Watching Them

Claire didn't hesitate for a single second.

She instantly shifted her position, wrapping both arms around Damian’s waist, making it look to the casual observer like an intimate, passionate embrace between two lovers sharing a quiet moment away from the crowd.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered fiercely into his ear, feeling the intense heat radiating through his black jacket. “Lean on me. We are moving toward the private terrace doors behind the ice sculpture. Slowly.”

Damian gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles bulging as he forced his legs to move, letting her support a significant portion of his massive frame. Every step sent a white-hot spike of agony through his side, but his face remained a mask of arrogant composure for the cameras watching them from across the room.

They navigated through the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns, past laughing politicians and tray-bearing waiters, until they reached the heavy velvet curtains guarding the private balcony doors.

Claire pushed through the thick fabric, guiding him out into the cold, rain-swept night air of the seventy-second-floor terrace.

The moment the balcony door closed behind them, cutting off the noise of the ballroom, Damian dropped to one knee against the wet stone floor with a heavy, pained groan.

“Damian!” Claire cried out, dropping down beside him in her expensive silk gown without a second thought for the rain soaking into the fabric.

She unbuttoned his tuxedo jacket with trembling, frantic fingers and pulled it open.

The crisp white linen of his dress shirt was no longer white. A deep, blooming stain of fresh crimson blood had soaked through the fabric along his left side, spreading rapidly down toward his belt line. The heavy impact of walking down the marble stairs and holding his body rigid during his confrontation with Sloane had torn open the deep lacerations he had sustained during the harbor ambush.

“Damian, you’re bleeding out,” she said, her voice shaking as she pressed her bare hands firmly against his wounded side to apply pressure.

Damian gasped, his big hand coming up to cover her blood-stained fingers, pressing them deeper into his flesh. “It looks... worse than it is, Bennett. Just... torn skin.”

“Shut up,” she snapped, her professional secretary facade completely shattering into raw, terrified emotion. “You idiot. You absolute, stubborn, reckless idiot! You should be in a trauma unit right now, not trading insults with Graham Sloane in a room full of cameras!”

Damian looked up at her through the rain falling on his face. Despite the intense agony ripping through his ribs, a small, genuine smile touched his lips as he looked at her dark eyes, bright with tears.

“You were... brilliant back there,” he grunted, his breathing heavy and ragged. “Sloane looked like he was going to throw up when you mentioned his shell accounts.”

“I made those numbers up on the spot, Damian!” she yelled softly over the sound of the wind, wiping rain from her eyes with her sleeve. “I don't have his audit report on my phone! I took a wild guess based on his public filings!”

Damian let out a short, wet laugh that turned into a harsh cough. “Even better.”

“Hold still,” Claire ordered, reaching up to tear a long, thick strip of silk from the inner lining of her expensive dress train. She wrapped the tough fabric tightly around his waist, pulling it hard to create an improvised pressure bandage over his wound.

Damian hissed through his teeth, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the stone ledge of the balcony rail.

“Declan is waiting in the alley behind the hotel with the armored SUV,” Claire said rapidly, checking her watch. “We are leaving right now. We’ll take the service stairs down to the basement loading dock. No more cameras, no more galas.”

“We can’t,” Damian grunted, reaching out to grab her wrist with a firm, iron grip.

Claire stopped, staring at him in disbelief. “What do you mean we can’t? Damian, if you lose any more blood, you’re going to go into hypovolemic shock in twenty minutes!”

“Sloane’s lead hitman... a man named Vance... is standing by the service stairs downstairs,” Damian whispered, his grey eyes piercing through the dark rain. “My dock lookout texted me three minutes before we reached the ballroom. Sloane didn't come here just to test my composure, Claire. He set up an execution bottleneck in the service corridors. If we take the back stairs, we walk directly into four suppressed submachine guns.”

Claire felt her blood run ice-cold.

The rain beat down relentlessly on the terrace stone, washing the red stain from Damian’s shirt down toward the drainage grate.

“Then how do we get out of here?” she asked, her voice barely audible over the howl of the wind.

Damian pulled himself up, using the stone balustrade to drag his body back onto his feet. He leaned heavily against the wet pillar, towering over her, his black shirt soaked with blood and rain, looking like a demonic shadow against the bright lights of the city skyline behind him.

“The main lobby,” Damian said, his voice dropping into a dark, resolute tone. “We walk straight back through the ballroom, down the main elevators, through the front doors, and into the middle of the street in front of every reporter and police officer in the city. Sloane won't fire a single shot in front of fifty news cameras.”

Claire looked at his pale, blood-drained face, then down at her own hands, which were covered in his wet blood.

“You won't make it to the front doors,” she said honestly, looking him in the eyes. “You’ll collapse halfway across the ballroom floor. And the second you fall, Sloane wins.”

Damian stared at her for three long seconds. Then he reached out, his big, rough hand cupping her rain-slick cheek, his thumb softly wiping away a droplet of water from her cheekbone.

“Then hold me up, Claire,” he whispered, his voice laced with a raw, desperate vulnerability she had never heard from him in five long years. “One last time. Hold me up.”

Claire stared up into his grey eyes, feeling her heart shatter into a thousand pieces.

She didn't answer with words.

Instead, she grabbed his black tuxedo jacket, pulled it firmly over his bloody shirt, buttoned it tightly across his chest to conceal the red stain, and slid her left arm around his waist, tucking her shoulder securely beneath his armpit.

“If you die on me tonight, Mr. Cole,” she whispered into his rain-soaked collar, “I’m transferring every single dollar in your offshore accounts to my personal fund and moving to Hawaii.”

Damian let out a low, deep chuckle against her neck.