Beneath his Fury.
Damien headed for the hotel, and on his way to the hotel, he called Eric and said, "Tell Seraphina to wait for me in her room. I don't want a lobby performance. I'm not in the mood for drama." Damien instructed coldly.
Eric, already used to Seraphina's antics, obeyed swiftly. Seraphina, ever the fool for attention, mistook it for affection.
The plan was simple. He'd make her believe he was coming over for the night to be with her, to make peace, maybe even to make love.
And Seraphina, foolish as ever, swallowed the bait. The moment she heard Damien was coming over, she dropped her act at the front desk and practically flew back to her room, thinking she'd won. Pathetic.
Damien scoffed under his breath as he walked through the hotel's dimly lit hallway, his steps slow and heavy, dragging guilt and fatigue along like shadows.
His thoughts? Nowhere near Seraphina.
They were on Eva.
Eva Myles, mysterious, elusive, and frustratingly crawling under his skin, the same one he was looking at right now as he walked along the hotel passage.
Ever since her supposed "boyfriend" had shown up at the hotel, she'd vanished.
Gone like smoke, like a ghost slipping through cracks. Damien hadn't seen her at the office. Not even a glimpse of that messy bun of hers peeking above the cubicle walls. Nothing but silence.
Except once.
That fleeting, haunting moment in his kitchen, like a dream he wasn't sure he'd imagined.
Four days.
That's how long it had been. She didn't come in on Monday either. Sent in a flimsy excuse about her mother being ill.
And Damien couldn't shake the feeling that it had everything to do with her supposed boyfriend.
And now, seeing her, really seeing her, Damien felt something twist inside him.
Eva looked... breathtaking. Her hair was styled to silky perfection, catching the light with every subtle movement. Her skin had a healthy, golden glow, like she'd just stepped off the cover of a high-end magazine. Even her nails were flawlessly manicured, each detail screaming of time, care, and attention.
She looked radiant. Different. Alive.
Clearly, something had changed.
There was a softness to her now, but also a kind of polished confidence. A woman well cared for. A woman being adored.
And then, he saw it, that guy. He must have been the guy behind the glow.
That tall, muscular man with tattoos crawling down his chest, standing casually in nothing but a towel. Damien had caught the look in his eyes before he pulled Eva inside his room and slammed the door shut behind them.
He didn't need a narrator to explain the rest.
So that's why she hadn't been coming to work.
That's why she said her mother was sick.
She'd lied. Just to be here. With him.
Fine.
Perfect, even.
Damien clenched his jaw, the bitter taste of something he couldn't name was crawling up his throat, but he forced a smirk onto his lips, cold, sharp, and hollow.
So thats the kind of person she is? Fine no problem.
When Damien finally stepped into the hotel room, Seraphina immediately launched into her performance, the crocodile tears, the quivering lips, the dramatic sighs. She painted herself as the poor, innocent victim, bullied and disrespected, her voice shaking with every exaggerated word.
Damien said nothing.
He simply sat there, cool and unreadable, watching her spin her tale.
When she finally paused, expecting comfort or outrage on her behalf, Damien calmly reached for the iPad resting beside him and handed it to her.
He didn't need to say a word, he just handed it over to her, and when Seraphina saw the content of the video, she widened her eyes in disbelief.
The color drained from her face as the footage began to play. Every detail, her entitlement, her tantrum, her threats, unfolded on screen in crystal-clear clarity. And with each second, Seraphina's act unraveled. She wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole.
Damien didn't look at her.
He lit a cigarette, the flame dancing briefly before the room filled with the bitter scent of smoke. His expression darkened, his eyes cold and unreadable, dangerous, even. He took a long drag and exhaled slowly, as though trying to calm a storm inside.
Seraphina felt a chill creep into her bones. She didn't understand his silence, his mood.
Something was off.
Unbeknownst to her, Damien's mind wasn't in that room anymore.
His thoughts were a tangled mess, flashing back to Eva, replaying that moment in the hallway, the look in her eyes, the man's hand pulling her inside.
"So that's what hides beneath that quiet gaze," he thought bitterly. "She plays innocent... but she's just like the rest. A viper underneath the velvet."
He scoffed under his breath, the sound sharp and bitter.
She always behave around him like an innocent timid girl. He couldn't believe her innocent act is just... an act. "A viper in lace," he calls it.
He scoffed bitterly, dragging the thought through clenched teeth. Then he suddenly remembered Tyler as well, how innocent she was, unknown to him she was nothing but a thief.
"They're all the same, soft on the outside, poison underneath. Lies dressed as desire. Deceit that wears perfume."
He hated that he was" thinking about her. And yet, he couldn't stop.
He didn't want to care. He tried not to.
But his mind betrayed him again.
For reasons he couldn't explain, Damien's mind was a storm of vivid scenes, each more maddening than the last. His thoughts kept dragging him back to that room, to her. He could almost hear the low murmur of her voice, see the subtle curve of her lips when she smirked like she knew something he didn't.
No matter how many times he shook his head, lit another cigarette, cursed under his breath, her image clung to him like heat on skin.
He remembered that morning, one time in his office when she had offered to help him fix his tie. The way her fingers brushed his chest while she was helping him with the tie. Her touch was light, but it sparked something reckless in him. His eyes had dropped, just for a second, catching the swell of her breasts beneath that silk blouse. Full. Soft. Perfect in the kind of way that made a man want to sin just to feel holy again.
She had a body that whispered invitations and a presence that promised ruin. And God help him, he'd wondered, more than once, what it would feel like to lose himself between her thighs, to hear her gasp his name in the dark, to taste the truth she kept hidden behind that careful smile.
By the time Damien snapped out of the thought, the ashtray was overflowing and his fingers stunk of smoke. He'd burned through nearly a pack without noticing.
He was in the room with Seraphina...
But every inch of him, mind, memory, desire, was consumed by another.
By Eva
Damien scoffed, a low bitter sound escaping his throat as the weight of the moment sank in. The situation was ridiculous. Pathetic, even.
After finishing the last drag of his cigarette, he crushed the butt into the ashtray with quiet finality. Then, without a word, he rose to his feet, adjusted his shirt and smoothed his jacket with mechanical precision, like a man putting his armor back on, before turning toward the door.
Seraphina, who had kept her distance the entire time, flinched. She had wanted to reach for him, to say something, anything, but one glance into his eyes and she froze.
They were ice. Cold. Dangerous.
A silent warning: Don't.
How could she forget?
The day he slapped her still echoed in her memory. The sting on her cheek, the humiliation, the terrifying silence that followed. And there had been many other incident, scenes upon scenes that made Seraphina very scared of him.
One certain time, Seraphina had barged into Damien's office uninvited while he was on an important call. He didn't say a word. He ended the call, walked up to her slowly, held her hand and walked her out of his office flunking her bag along with her.
The look in his eyes? Void of emotion. Cold. Calculated.
He simply said: "Next time, knock."
There was also the Glass Incident
In a heated argument, Seraphina raised her voice at him, accusing him of still being in love with Tyler who must have very much moved on and wants nothing to do with him.
Damien, eerily calm, picked up a glass of red wine, looked her in the eye... and smashed it against the wall right beside her head, shards raining down.
He didn't yell. He just said:
"Don't ever speak her name again."
The Elevator Silence
After a tense event, Seraphina tried to hold his hand in front of some executives to mark her territory.
Damien pulled away.
In the elevator afterward, he didn't speak a single word the entire ride down. The silence suffocated her. At the bottom floor, he leaned in close and whispered,
"If you ever try to stake a claim on what isn't yours, I'll make sure you regret it."
Firing the Driver
A loyal driver of three years accidentally let Seraphina into Damien's private property without verifying. Damien fired the man on the spot in front of her, coldly saying:
"If a dog can't guard the gate, it deserves the bullet."
The Office Meltdown.
She once sent flowers to his office to "cheer him up" during a stressful week.
She had gone visiting him that day with her friends, and handed him those beautiful flowers but he didn't even mind her friends that were present, he took the flowers and toss it into the trash can.
"This is my work place, don't ever cross personal with business. This is not a kindergarten. The next time you show up at my work place with something this stupid, along with your senseless friends, I'll have you all locked up in the toilet."
Seraphina didn't speak to anyone for three days. The humiliation burned deep.
The Locked Room.
During a heated conversation at a hotel, Seraphina refused to leave Damien's room.
So he left instead, but locked her inside with no warning. She banged the door, screamed, cried for hours until housekeeping arrived.
When she confronted him later, all he said was:
"I warned you. I don't like being disrespected in my space."
He didn't shout. He didn't threaten.
He just acted. And his anger? It was volcanic. Silent. Deadly.
So Seraphina, despite every urge inside her, chose restraint. She remained still, watching him, her heart pounding, lips trembling with unspoken words.
She didn't know what was going through his mind, but one thing was obvious, he looked angry or maybe in pain.
Not the kind of anger that passes like a cloud, but the kind that simmers beneath the surface, ruthless and consuming.