POV: Damien Blackwood
The Blackwood family estate wasn't a home.
It was a monument.
Marble walls. Oil portraits. Quiet halls that swallowed sound. Damien hadn't stepped foot in it in over a year, and yet nothing had changed. Not the cold, not the formality, not the weight of legacy pressed into every inch of the stone.
The butler greeted him with a nod and no words, just like always.
Eleanor was in the solarium, reading.
She didn't look up as he approached.
"You're early," she said, flipping a page.
"I didn't realize I was expected at all."
"You're always expected," she replied. "You're just rarely welcome."
Damien folded his coat over the arm of the chair across from her and sat.
"I'm not here to fight."
Eleanor closed the book. "Then you're here for the will."
He blinked. "What?"
She sighed. "Your father's lawyers are ready to finalize the asset transfer. They want your signature. Posthumously, Thomas has finally decided to acknowledge your existence again."
Thomas Blackwood had died three months ago—quietly, without ceremony. No public obituary. No funeral. Not even a press release. Damien had been informed by a two-line email from the family's legal firm.
They hadn't spoken in almost a decade.
Damien had built Blackwood Holdings while his father tried to discredit him from the shadows. Every win Damien made was met with silence or sabotage.
"You know what he left me?" Damien asked, staring out the window.
"A company you already owned?" Eleanor offered.
"A letter," Damien said. "Two pages of accusations and a final warning."
"What did it say?"
"That I'd turn everything I touched into ash. That one day, someone would try to love me through it—and that I'd destroy them too."
Eleanor looked up at that.
But didn't argue.
Because she had once believed the same.
"Is Emory still in Zurich?" Damien asked, shifting the topic.
Eleanor's expression tensed slightly. "He's working through his issues."
"Still blaming me for his relapse?"
"He's blaming the family for turning grief into leverage," she said. "You were part of that."
Damien said nothing.
His younger brother had spiraled after their father's last corporate war. Emory had been the artistic one, the one who painted instead of presented. The one who saw the world in softness while Damien was learning how to break it.
He hadn't answered Damien's calls in years.
"I wrote to him last month," Damien said. "He didn't reply."
"Then maybe you should ask why," Eleanor replied coldly.
Damien clenched his jaw.
Because he already knew.
And maybe he deserved it.
After the meeting, Damien wandered the eastern wing of the estate. His childhood wing. His old bedroom door was still closed—polished brass handle untouched.
He opened it slowly.
Inside, everything was as it had been at sixteen.
Books on the shelves. A soccer medal on the desk. A photograph of him and Emory as kids—smiling, barefoot in summer grass before suits and secrets ruined them.
Damien walked to the window and stared out at the frozen garden below.
"You've changed," a voice said behind him.
He turned.
Eleanor stood in the doorway.
"You're colder now," she added. "Sharper."
Damien's mouth twitched. "And you're softer. I think that scares me more."
Eleanor didn't laugh.
She just said, "You used to build things with your hands. Now you build walls."
He turned back to the window.
"I build what survives."
That night, Damien returned to the city.
He didn't go to his penthouse.
He went to the Blackwood Tower and sat alone in the executive boardroom with the lights off and the skyline at his feet.
He thought of Ava.
Of the way she looked at him like she saw the cracks in his armor.
Of the way she didn't flinch when she challenged him.
Of the letter from Jonathan Sinclair, still tucked away like a knife in his chest.
And for the first time in a long time, Damien wondered:
What would happen if someone truly knew him?
The cold.
The past.
The damage.
Would they still try to love him?
Would Ava?
And if she did…
Would he burn her too?