The article hit global headlines at dawn.
"Calder Wolfe Exposes Billionaire Damon Cross and Alleged Mistress in Offshore Cover-Up Scandal."
"Serena Harrow: The Girl Behind the Ghost Accounts?"
Every screen, every stock ticker, every whisper in boardrooms from Paris to Hong Kong carried their names now.
Serena didn't speak as the phone buzzed endlessly on the nightstand. She sat on the edge of Damon's hotel bed, shoulders bare, wrapped in one of his shirts again—only this time, the scent felt like a shield she wasn't sure could hold.
Her eyes stared at the muted television.
Her photo filled the screen—one from three years ago. Younger. Smiling. Naïve.
The voiceover beneath it was brutal.
"…possibly groomed…company-funded assets…intimate links suggest—"
She turned it off.
Damon stood at the balcony doors, jaw tight, hands clenched at his sides. The sun hadn't even risen fully, but his phone had already rung twenty-three times—lawyers, investors, traitors in expensive suits pretending they didn't already believe the worst.
"You should go," he said quietly.
Serena's heart cracked.
"I'm not leaving you."
"This isn't loyalty," he said, not facing her. "It's self-preservation. If you stay, they'll chew you apart."
She rose, bare feet touching the cool floor, the silk of his shirt barely covering the heat in her chest.
"I already survived worse."
Damon turned finally, eyes dark.
"Don't romanticize this. I brought you into a war. And Calder—he knows where to hit hardest. He won't stop until one of us falls."
"Then let me fall beside you," she whispered.
"No." His voice broke. "You fall, Serena, and it's my fault."
She crossed the space between them. Placed her hand on his chest. Felt the drumbeat of guilt beneath his ribs.
"Then don't make this about blame. Make it about choice."
He didn't speak.
Didn't breathe.
So she went on.
"You told me once that I saved you. That I made you believe in something again. Then believe in this—whatever this storm is—we are still us. Damon, they can't take that unless we let them."
His fingers curled around her wrist.
Tight.
Not painful.
Just… desperate.
"I don't know how to protect you anymore."
"You don't have to," she said. "You just have to stand with me."
Their kiss wasn't gentle.
It was frantic. Fierce.
A collision of fear and longing and memories not yet made. Damon's mouth devoured hers like she was the only safe place left in the world. Her hands pulled at his collar, needing more, needing now, needing him in every way that made sense and didn't.
When he broke away, his lips were red, his voice a husk of the man who ruled empires.
"I want to burn everything for you."
"Then start with the lies," she said. "And stand in the fire with me."
---
That Evening – Zurich Private Estate
The room was full of power.
Men and women in designer armor. Lawyers. PR architects. Shadow players. But none of them mattered more than the two people standing at the center.
Serena wore a deep crimson dress—one that made no apologies.
Damon wore the look of a man ready to destroy everything he'd built to keep what truly mattered.
He took the podium.
"Let me be clear," he said, voice sharp, measured. "Every penny in those accounts was legal. Every transfer approved. The attempts to frame this as manipulation or coercion are desperate. And weak."
"And Miss Harrow?" someone barked from the crowd.
Damon didn't even blink.
"She's not a pawn. She's my partner. In business. In vision. And in every part of the life I've rebuilt."
The silence that followed was electric.
Because for the first time—he hadn't hidden her.
He'd chosen her.
In the open.
In front of the world.
Serena's breath hitched.
Not from fear.
But from the quiet, unbreakable truth in his voice.
---
Later, behind closed doors, as the lawyers scrambled to control the narrative, Serena sat with Damon in the quiet of the estate's garden.
His head rested back against the bench. Her fingers intertwined with his.
"We're not out of this," he said.
"I know."
"They'll dig deeper."
"Let them."
"They'll threaten your family next. Your name."
Serena turned to him.
"My name doesn't matter. You do."
He looked at her then—really looked.
And in his gaze, she saw it:
Not just love.
But surrender.
Not weakness.
But peace.
"I'd burn the world to keep you," he said again.
And she smiled.
"Then let it burn."