The boardroom was glass, modern, and perched atop one of Damon's tallest towers in Zurich. Beneath them, the city glittered like a lie told too well. Above, the sky stretched wide and cold.
Serena stood beside Damon in silence, dressed in a sleek black suit that hugged her body like armor—her hair swept back, lips bare, gaze unflinching. She had learned how to walk into rooms that didn't want her there.
And this room?
It was full of men with thin patience and thinner smiles.
"We called this meeting," Damon said as the last chair scraped back into place, "to address the noise Calder Wolfe has stirred up."
A murmur rolled through the table. Tension thick as silk thread ready to snap.
"He claims to have proof you've used offshore funds for private operations," said Mr. Lark, the silver-haired board member from Geneva. "He's threatening to bring this to press if he's not… restored."
Restored.
As if betrayal was just a brief sabbatical.
"I'll make this simple," Damon said, fingers laced on the table. "If anyone on this board thinks for a moment that bringing Calder back is the solution—you're mistaken."
"And what about the girl?" one voice asked. "The file he leaked mentions Serena Harrow's name repeatedly. Photos. Financial transfers. International travel paid through Cross accounts."
Serena didn't flinch.
"Let me speak," she said, voice steady.
All heads turned.
"I didn't ask for Damon's protection. I didn't ask to be moved, or hidden, or paid for. But if he hadn't done it, I wouldn't be standing here. You'd be looking at a news article about the daughter of a disgraced financier who took her own life at twenty-one."
Her voice didn't break.
But her fingers curled slightly at her side.
"I was in danger. And Damon protected me. He did what none of you had the courage or decency to do."
The board was silent.
Serena continued.
"I've built businesses now. I've handled your charity wings. I've raised the stock of Cross International's sustainability index. I've done the work. Don't reduce me to a line item in Calder's revenge."
Damon watched her with something raw in his eyes.
Not pride.
Awe.
Because this—this fire in her—he hadn't lit it.
She had always carried it.
"I propose we bring the fight to Calder," Serena finished. "Not by hiding—but by exposing what he really stole."
Lark cleared his throat. "And you'd stand beside Mr. Cross even if this turns… ruinous?"
Serena turned to Damon.
Their eyes met.
"I already am."
---
That Night – Zurich Apartment
Damon poured the wine in silence.
Serena leaned against the windowsill, arms crossed, watching the traffic below like it meant something. Like it could carry their questions away.
"You were extraordinary today," Damon said softly, setting her glass on the table.
She didn't respond at first.
Then: "Do you regret it?"
He looked up. "Regret what?"
"Saving me. Bringing me into your world. Letting my name become part of your empire's shadow."
He crossed the room slowly, standing in front of her.
"I regret every moment I spent trying not to love you," he said. "That's what I regret."
Her eyes shimmered, but she didn't cry. Not this time.
Because his words weren't meant to undo her.
They were meant to meet her—where she stood, proud and bruised.
He touched her face gently.
"You saved me too, Serena. You just don't know it yet."
She leaned into his palm. "Then tell me."
"When I met you," he whispered, "I believed in nothing. Not forever. Not redemption. Not softness. But you made silence feel like music. You made pain feel like purpose."
Her breath trembled.
"You made me want things I thought were dead inside me."
She reached up and kissed him—slow, aching, deep.
It wasn't about lust.
It was about truth.
The kind people bled for.
---
Later, wrapped in each other beneath the soft sheets of a Zurich hotel room, Serena whispered into the dark:
"Will we survive this?"
Damon held her tighter.
"I don't know," he said honestly.
"But if we fall…"
She pressed her forehead to his chest. "Then fall with me."
And outside, the firestorm Calder Wolfe had begun spread through headlines and backroom whispers.
But inside, two people lay tangled together—
not as saviors or survivors.
But as two halves of a flame the world couldn't put out.