Damian’s POV

Morning in this house doesn’t arrive like it does anywhere else. It isn’t gradual. It feels issued — an order that the sun and the servants obey. Curtains are drawn back at precise angles. Steps move soft but exact down the hall. Even the air seems to hold still, waiting for me to decide what happens next.

I woke before the sun anyway. Habit. Grief makes you early to everything.

Standing in the dim of my room, buttoning my shirt one slow notch at a time, I could feel that hollow place inside me again. Not the part built from revenge. The other one. The one that kept forming a single name over and over: Elena.

I’d promised myself I’d stay clinical. That she’d be leverage. Nothing more. That thought held as long as it took to pour a cup of coffee I never touched. I left the room still empty-handed and went downstairs.

They’d told me she’d slept most of the night. Doctor said “stable.” My men had muttered, argued, tidied up the mess of last night. I hated all of it, maybe because it was easier to hate them than to admit I had a soft spot I didn’t want.

I found her before breakfast.

The corridor was quiet — the staff had already learned to keep their distance. The door to the small room stood ajar, a stripe of light cutting the dark. Through it I could see her: pale, small, wrapped in a blanket like a child dragged in from the cold and left by someone else’s fire.

I stepped inside before I even thought about it. Habit again. Control.

“Get up,” I said.

She startled. Eyes shot open. Confusion and fear ran across her face like quick shadows. She tried to sit, tried to look stronger than she was. I hated that kind of pretending; it makes punishment too easy.

“Now,” I said, sharper.

She pushed herself upright slowly, fingers still clutching the blanket. Her legs trembled when she tried to stand. For a second I hesitated at the sight — this fragile, stubborn thing forcing herself to obey — and then my patience snapped like old string.

I stepped forward, caught the back of her dress at the neck and hauled her up. She stumbled, pale under my hand. The only thing I saw was the set of her mouth, the hitch of her breath.

“You’re wasting time,” I said. Reasonable words, but the line under them was hot and ugly. “I don’t have the patience to babysit you while you pretend to be fragile.”

Tears slid down her face before she could stop them. She tried to speak — some stammered apology, some explanation — and it broke into a raw sob. For a heartbeat I wanted to brush it away, like tears were something you could just flick off. Then the urge folded back on itself, caged.

“You want to talk?” I asked, voice flat. “Then talk.” My fingers tightened on the fabric until she drew a sharp breath.

She clung to whatever dignity she had left, words spilling out in a hiss. “I—I'm sorry. I—please—”

The begging came frantic, automatic, desperate. She sank to her knees without even meaning to, hands cupped together like a small bowl of plea.

“Forgive me,” she whispered, voice thin and cracked. “Please. I didn’t mean— I never—please, forgive me. I can make it right. I’ll—”

I watched her the way I watch storms form: still until the first lightning strikes, then something in me bends. She kept spilling words, the confession of someone who knows the price and is hoping it’ll be less than the debt.

Men like me learn early: mercy is a transaction. If you give it before the price is paid, you pay again. I repeated it now like a prayer, to keep the other part of me — awkward, dangerous, human — locked up.

“You will be quiet,” I said. I flicked my hand toward the man in the doorway. “Bring a gag.”

He looked at me, then at her, question flickering in his eyes — Do we really? — then he obeyed.

She sobbed louder when she saw it. Reached for me, hands shaking. I stepped back. I didn’t let her touch me. I couldn’t.

“You think noise helps your case?” I asked, blunt. Her terror pooled under her lashes, her hands small, folded like a prayer.

“Kneel,” I told the man. “Quick.”

They moved with practiced efficiency, and it made my skin crawl. Cloth, rough, simple. They pressed it over her mouth, tied the knot. She flinched like a bird hit by shadow. Her tears soaked into the fabric.

I watched her struggle out muffled sounds, and some ugly part of me thrilled at her smallness. I hated it. Hated that my pulse jumped for reasons that had nothing to do with strategy.

I leaned close, my breath ghosting her cheek. “You’re not leaving this house,” I said quietly. “Not alive. Not with stories to tell. You’re here until I decide. You’re here until I’ve taken back what they used you to steal. Piece by piece.”

Her shoulders shook; she nodded once. Submission as currency. It didn’t mean she understood what “stuck” really meant.

“You will pay,” I said, because words were still my kind of power. “And make no mistake: I will make you pay for what you cost me.”

She dropped her head, eyes wet, muffled whimpers leaking through the cloth.

I straightened. The room felt too small, crowded by my own decisions. I hated how sick it made me. Like a splinter I couldn’t dig out: the thought of her in my house, weak, trembling, the girl I’d dragged from a fall. I’d meant to use her. Break her. What shamed me was how often I checked she was still breathing.

I turned before I could do something I’d regret — before I could smooth the hair from her face. Orders instead: move her to a proper room, feed her, treat her injuries, keep watch but from a distance, report to me twice an hour. Commands, not touch.

They carried her out, stiff as a puppet. When the door closed, her muffled sobs faded. My thoughts tasted like iron.

I told myself she was necessary. An instrument. That was why she stayed alive. Logic over sentiment. Cleaner that way. But as I paced my study and listened to the clock tick, a quieter thought pressed at me:

What if I kept her because I couldn’t stand the idea of her being free while my brother lay dead?

I didn’t answer. I folded my hands behind my back and repeated the old plan: watch, wait, break. Keep her. Keep her alive. Make those who used her bleed.

It was enough to keep me upright. Enough to move me forward. Enough to keep me from touching the soft place in my chest that would split if I felt it.

For now, that was who I was: the man who set the terms, who didn’t flinch, who taught her what it meant to be caught.

And if, in the lonely hours, when the house creaked and my thoughts echoed, I found myself checking her door again — well, I would call it vigilance. Strategy. Anything but what it really was.

Elena was here. Bound to the house. Bound to the reckoning. And I would keep my side of it, no matter how much it frayed the edges of the man I used to be.