Damien's POV
The first time I learned love was a weapon, I was twenty-two and bleeding on Italian marble. Her name was Elara. She laughed like she didn't belong in the world she was born into a world of porcelain manners and vicious inheritance. She danced barefoot at midnight. She kissed with her whole mouth, like she wanted to consume the moment. And she lied like it was an art form.
I loved her. God, I fucking loved her. Until I found her in my father's bed. The same father who told me love was a liability. That desire was leverage. That women were either assets or distractions. I didn't listen. Not until I walked in on the woman I would've burned empires for, wrapped in silk sheets that weren't mine.
She didn't cry. She didn't plead. She smiled.
And said, "You never learned the game, Damien."
That night, I stopped playing chess with my heart and started playing with other people's.
*****
I watched her from the hallway. Isla. Packing. Folding her lingerie with care like it wasn't soaked in nights that rewired my brain. She hadn't slammed the door. Hadn't screamed but her silence was louder than anything she could've said. I deserved it because I didn't just pull her into this. I engineered it. Six months ago, I read the report.
ISLA VOSS
• Degree: Economics, Summa Cum Laude
• Internship: Wallach & Price
• Terminated: 14 months ago
• Mother: Stage IV cancer. No medical insurance.
• Eviction
I memorized every line and then I bought the building she lived in. Tripled her rent. Made sure her mother's treatment mysteriously became "covered." Made sure she was in the right room, at the right party, when I made my move because I wanted her and I don't lose what I want.
Now she stood there, folding her way out of my life and for the first time in years, I didn't have a move. Only need. Only ache. Only the fucking truth crawling up the back of my throat like a confession I couldn't afford to spill.
I stepped into the room. She didn't look up.
"You really packing, or just trying to prove a point?"
No answer. I walked closer. Slowly. Like she was a feral thing.
"You want honesty?" I asked, voice low. "I've got more of that than you'll want."
Still, she didn't stop.
"Your eviction? That wasn't bad luck."
Her hands froze.
"The miracle insurance for your mother? Me."
She turned. Eyes wide. Wet.
"You did that?"
"I did all of it. To get you here. In this life. In that dress. In my bed."
"You manipulated me."
"I chose you."
"That's not love, Damien. That's control."
"It's survival."
She shook her head like she wanted to scrub me from her memory.
"You could've just asked."
I stepped closer.
"And if I had? Would you have come?"
Her silence was answer enough. I reached for her then slow, deliberate. Not to stop her. Just to feel her one more time before she became the second woman to choose escape over me.
"I made you mine long before you knew my name."
Her eyes shimmered with betrayal. Fury. Something close to heartbreak and for once, I didn't know if I'd won or lost everything.
The silence between us didn't crack. It splintered sharper than glass, more dangerous than any scream. She turned back to her suitcase, shoving in clothes that still smelled like my skin. The zipper caught on lace, but she didn't pause. She kept packing like each folded shirt was an incision neat, clean, final.
I didn't beg. Men like me aren't built to beg but God, I wanted to.
"I own the building," I said, quieter now. "Your apartment. The elevator that jammed the day we met? I rigged it."
She froze again.
"I had you profiled, Isla. Every friend. Every debt. I knew what made you stay up at night. And I twisted it all until you showed up in my world exactly how I wanted."
Her breath hitched. One hand clenched the edge of the suitcase. "Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because you need to know who you're leaving."
She turned. Her eyes didn't soften they sharpened.
"No, Damien. I need to know who I was falling for. And this—" she gestured to the room, the life, me "—this was never real."
"But the nights were."
She flinched. Just barely. But I saw it. Felt it.
"Were they?" she whispered.
I took a step closer.
"You think I faked the way I touched you?" I asked, voice steel-wrapped. "You think I orchestrated the sound you make when you come so hard you forget your name?"
Her lips parted. I didn't stop.
"You think I could fake the way I stop breathing when you walk into a room?"
She shook her head once. A slow, pained gesture.
"I think you've lived too long in a world where control and affection look the same."
I reached for her then and this time, she didn't stop me. I gripped her wrist. Soft. Just enough for her to know I could still touch her. Still wanted to.
"I don't fall, Isla. I don't stumble. I don't bleed over anyone."
Her eyes searched mine, breath trembling. "So what am I?"
I lowered my head until our foreheads nearly touched.
"A fucking wound I never saw coming."
Her eyes fluttered shut and then she kissed me. Not with forgiveness. Not with surrender but like two people bleeding the same truth and knowing it still won't save them.
Her mouth was furious. Her tongue unforgiving. Her hands clawed at my shirt like she hated it hated me and still couldn't stop wanting. I grabbed her by the waist and slammed her back against the closet door. A gasp broke from her lips as I dropped to my knees.
"You want truth?" I growled against her thigh. "I've got it in spades."
I yanked her shorts down in one motion. She braced herself, hands in my hair as I dragged my mouth over her skin, slow and reverent, before burying my tongue where she pulsed heat. She moaned. A choked, desperate sound. I worshipped her there. Licked her like a man starved. Like a man at confession.
Each gasp she made was an absolution I didn't deserve but I took it anyway. She came against my mouth with a cry that cracked whatever I had left of a soul. I stood, lips slick with her, and kissed her mouth before she could speak. Let her taste what she did to me. What she meant.
She didn't push me away. She pulled me closer and then we were on the bed. Her half-packed suitcase falling open beside us. Lace spilling like secrets. I undressed her slowly. Reverently. Like she was something I might never touch again.
Her legs wrapped around my hips, and when I entered her, she gasped like it still surprised her how good it felt. How right. My pace was brutal. Unapologetic. But my hands trembled as I gripped her waist.
This wasn't just sex. This was the last time she'd let me touch her. I could feel it in the way she clung to me. Not out of love. But goodbye.
"I hate you," she whispered against my throat.
"I know."
"I wish I'd never met you."
"Me too."
We came together like that hating, needing, drowning and when it was over, she turned her back to me and pulled the sheets high like a shield. I lay beside her in silence, memorizing the shape of her spine because I knew she was still going to leave and I wasn't going to stop her. Not this time.
The room went still. No cries. No anger. No sobbing aftermath you see in the movies. Just breath. And distance. She didn't speak. Neither did I. I memorized the rise and fall of her back. The rhythm of her inhale steady, practiced, like someone trying not to feel.
I had learned the shape of her body like it was scripture but I would never again be allowed to read it. Minutes passed. Maybe hours. I blinked, and the world stayed quiet. She stood eventually, bare feet brushing against marble as she padded to the bathroom without a word. The door didn't slam. It clicked shut like the end of a sentence I didn't want to read. I stared at the ceiling. I had orchestrated the perfect lie.
Built a reality just precise enough to pull her in, and just fragile enough to shatter the second she touched the truth. I deserved this.
She came back out a few minutes later. Dressed in the same clothes she'd walked in with, but everything else about her had changed. Her spine was straighter. Her face colder. Her eyes... distant. She didn't even look at me when she grabbed her suitcase. I couldn't let her leave without saying one last thing.
"Isla."
She paused barely. Her fingers gripped the handle. The suitcase tilted with her breath.
"Don't come back," I said.
Her head turned slowly. Just enough for me to see the edge of her cheek, the line of her jaw.
"Don't flatter yourself," she said. Her voice was quiet. Void of heat. Of hope. Of us.
She walked toward the elevator. Each step echoed louder than the last and I let her go. When the door clicked shut behind her, the silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was punishment. Her scent still clung to my sheets. My skin. My goddamn bloodstream. I sat at the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, breathing in slow, jagged fragments. I didn't chase her. Didn't throw the glass. Didn't scream. I just sat there, letting the space she left behind become part of me.
Later, I wandered back into my office. The one room in this penthouse where emotion wasn't allowed. I turned on the security feed. Watched the black-and-white footage of her stepping into the elevator. Not looking back. Even when the doors closed, she didn't turn. Not once. That told me everything I needed to know.
She wasn't leaving to test me. She was done. I let the screen flicker to black and picked up my phone. There were a dozen messages waiting deals, contracts, fires that needed putting out. None of them mattered. Not now. I tapped out a message to Julian:
> It's done.
No reply. He didn't need to say anything. He knew what I meant. He'd been there when I'd first seen Isla's profile. When I first maneuvered the chessboard. When I first decided to pull her into orbit. He warned me too. Not about falling. About becoming human. I didn't listen. Now I was bleeding out in silence because of it.
I poured a drink. Didn't drink it. Stared out the window at the city I once believed I ruled. All my power, my influence it didn't matter because power doesn't keep someone who wants to be free. She had been fire and I'd thought I could hold it in my hands without getting burned. Now all I had were ashes.
Later that night, I found myself standing at the piano. The one she used to trace her fingers along absentmindedly when she thought I wasn't watching. I played a single note. Then another. Soon, I wasn't thinking. I was remembering her laugh in the kitchen.
Her bare feet on my tile floor. The way she whispered my name in the dark like it was something holy, not haunted. My hands froze above the keys then I whispered it out loud, the question that had been gnawing at the back of my mind since she packed that fucking suitcase:
"What do you do when the one person you manipulated into staying… leaves you because they finally see the truth?"
No answer. Just me and the silence. I didn't sleep that night not because of guilt but because I finally understood the difference between control and connection. I knew I could have the world but without Isla Voss in it, It meant nothing.