Seraphina's POV
I try to push past him.
My body moves on instinct, desperate to escape. But Damien doesn't move. His body becomes a wall.
"Let me go," I demand.
"No." Simple. Final.
"You killed Madison—"
"And I'd do it again." No hesitation. No apology. "She humiliated you publicly. Made you cry. In my world, that's a death sentence."
I try to push against him again. It's like pushing against steel. He doesn't budge. He doesn't even breathe harder.
"Your world?" My voice cracks. "What world?"
"The criminal underworld." His smile is cold. "I control half of New York's underground. While everyone pitied the dying heir, I built an empire."
The words hit me like physical blows. Criminal underworld. Empire. This isn't just about murder. This is about a man who's constructed an entire hidden kingdom while the world watched a disabled man in a wheelchair.
My legs feel weak.
"And my family's debts?" I whisper. "The medical bills? The money problems that forced me to marry you?"
Damien's silence is answer enough.
Everything shatters.
"Oh my God," I breathe. "You created it all. You orchestrated everything."
His eyes don't flinch. His expression doesn't soften. "Your father's gambling debts? I bought them. Every marker. Every IOU. All of it came from me."
"That's not possible. He gambled away—"
"I made sure he lost to the right people. People I own." Damien steps closer. "Your stepmother's medical insurance? I made it lapse. Twice. When they tried to reinstate it, I had it blocked."
My heart is pounding so hard I think it might explode out of my chest.
"The hospital bills. The treatments. The desperation." His voice is calm. Matter-of-fact. Like he's describing someone else's life instead of the carefully constructed prison he built around mine. "All of it was me, Seraphina. I engineered every financial crisis until there was no option except this marriage."
"Why?" Tears burn my eyes. "Why go through all this?"
"Because asking you on a date wouldn't have worked." He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture is tender. Intimate. Obscene given what he's just confessed. "You would have said no. Run away. Rejected the strange man obsessed with you."
I jerk away from his touch.
"But this—a dying man who needed you, a marriage that would end soon, a chance to save your family—this was brilliant." He gestures between us. "This gave me time. Five years to be close to you. To watch you. To wait for the right moment."
"To what?" I demand. "To what, Damien?"
"To show you who I really am." He moves toward me. I move backward until my legs hit the couch and I fall onto it. He sits beside me, and I'm trapped between him and the cushions. "To show you that I'm not the dying man you pitied. I'm the man you should have feared from the beginning."
"This is insane. You're insane." I'm shaking. "You manipulated my entire family. You destroyed my father's life. You—"
"Saved your family," he interrupts quietly. "I made sure your stepmother got treated. I made sure your father's debts were with me instead of people who would have killed him. I made sure Madison had money for college." He leans closer. "I provided everything. All they had to do was send you to me."
"They didn't know—"
"Of course they didn't know. They were too desperate to ask questions." His hand finds my jaw. His thumb traces my cheekbone. "They just took the money and thanked God for the miracle. They never realized they were signing you away to a devil."
I want to hit him. I want to scream. I want to run. But I'm frozen under the weight of what he's saying. Six years. He's been planning this for six years. Every moment of my father's addiction, my stepmother's illness, Madison's jealousy—all orchestrated by this man.
"How could you do this?" I whisper.
"Easily." His smile is beautiful and terrible. "I have unlimited resources. Unlimited power. Unlimited patience. I saw you at that gallery, and I decided you would be mine. The how was just a matter of logistics."
"I'm not an acquisition, Damien. I'm a person."
"You were a person I obsessed over." He releases my face. "You are now something far more important. You are mine. Completely. Irrevocably. And now you finally understand the depth of what that means."
He stands and walks to the window. Below us, New York City glitters in the darkness. All those lights. All those people. And this man controls half of them.
"The question now," he says without turning around, "is what you do with this information."
I'm shaking so hard I can barely speak. "I could go to the police."
"And tell them what? That I orchestrated your family's financial problems? That's not illegal. That's just good business." He finally turns to look at me. "That I had your stepsister killed? There's no evidence. No witness. Just a shadow on a security camera."
"You confessed."
"To you. To my wife. In our home. With no recording, no witnesses, no proof." He walks back toward me. "Who would believe you? And more importantly, would you really want to expose your family's shame to the world? Would you want everyone to know how easily you were bought?"
The question lands like a punch to my gut.
He kneels in front of me, his dark eyes level with mine.
"Or," he says softly, "you could stop fighting. Stop pretending you don't belong to me. Stop acting like you have options." He takes my hand. His touch is warm. Claiming. "You could accept what you are now, Seraphina. Accept that you're the queen of my empire. Accept that everything we do from this moment forward, we do together."
"And if I refuse?"
His smile is sad and certain.
"You won't." He stands and extends his hand. "Because I've built your entire world, wife. Without me, you have nothing. Your family has nothing. And deep down, in the part of you that you're trying to hide, you don't want to refuse."
I look at his outstretched hand.
And then I hear the sound that changes everything.
A phone ringing in his pocket. Not a normal ringtone. Something darker. Something that makes his entire expression shift into something else entirely.
He answers without checking who it is.
"Speak," he says.
I can hear the voice on the other end, male, urgent, but I can't make out the words.
Damien's face goes absolutely blank. When he speaks again, his voice is pure ice.
"How long ago?"
Another pause.
"And the witness?"
His eyes turn to me. Lock onto mine. And in that moment, I understand that whatever is happening on that call involves me. Threatens me. Will change everything again.
"Handle it," he says quietly. "And make it clean."
He hangs up the phone.
"What happened?" I whisper.
Damien pockets the phone and looks at me with an expression I've never seen before. Not anger. Not possessiveness. Something far colder.
"It seems," he says slowly, "that your stepmother just went to the police. She's telling them everything about our marriage. About the contract. About the money. About how I orchestrated your family's debts."
My blood freezes.
"She's selling you out to save herself, Seraphina. And she's bringing evidence. Financial records. Contracts. Everything they need to build a case against me."
"What are you going to do?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
Damien's smile is dark.
"The same thing I did to Madison," he says. "I'm going to protect what's mine."
And I realize in that moment: I've made a terrible mistake. I've accepted the hand of a monster, and now we're both about to do something unforgivable.