Chapter 11

Everything in him shut off. He dropped to the floor.

The words didn't register. Sera is dead.

His assistant didn't repeat it. He just played the last file.

Wind, loud. Voices through it, sharp.

"Why wouldn't I kill you? Your mother. Your brother. They're crippled and comatose because of me. You're just another number."

"Damien and I grew up together. He protected me. I'm not losing to some outsider."

Then — Seraphina, choking.

Then — a splash.

Silence.

"Seraphina. If you wanted to stay alive, you shouldn't have gotten in my way. Damien is mine. He can only be mine."

Sera was dead.

Vivienne had pushed her off the yacht. Into the open ocean. And she hadn't come up.

He couldn't breathe.

His eyes filled with grief and something darker. His head felt ready to crack. He couldn't let it. Not yet.

Vivienne.

She had driven Seraphina to her death. All of this was her.

Fire ignited under his skin. His jaw locked. He kept whatever was about to come out of him contained. Barely.

He didn't even have to hunt Vivienne down. She came to him.

"Damien — help me —"

"Seraphina had someone try to kidnap me again! She got someone to drug me — I only escaped because I knocked the glass over —"

"I'm so scared — Damien, please, save me — she's completely lost it —"

She came stumbling through the door, hand at her throat, face wet with tears, playing wounded perfectly.

If he hadn't just learned the truth. If he didn't know that Vivienne had pushed Sera into the sea with her own hands. He might have fallen for it again.

He might have turned around and helped her get back at Seraphina.

The way he had for an entire year.

"You're saying — Seraphina did this?" His voice came out ragged, scraped raw.

She nodded quickly.

She was about to layer in another detail when her eyes caught the folder on his desk.

The divorce papers.

Her face blanked for a beat. Then her expression couldn't hold anymore. A laugh slipped out.

She covered her mouth. Her eyes glittered.

"Damien — you and Seraphina — you're actually divorced?"

"Are you enjoying this?" His knuckles popped.

"Of course I am. I've waited for this day for so long." She hadn't clocked the temperature in the room yet. She was too busy confessing.

"Damien, I love you. I've loved you for years. The day you got married I cried and cried. I begged my parents to stop it, but they said you were the one who insisted on marrying Seraphina. I thought I'd lost my chance. But this — this proves I didn't."

"You care about me. You think about me. You have feelings for me. That's why you're divorced, isn't it? Because you want to be with me?"

"You should have thrown her out. You don't even know, she was trying to hurt me again —"

The sentence wasn't finished.

His hand closed in her hair and yanked her head back.

"You said she was still coming after you. She is dead, Vivienne. How exactly is she coming after you?"

"You lied to me."

His voice and face both were so cold she could barely recognize him. She had only ever seen the tender, accommodating Damien. This one was new.

The word dead hit her like something physical.

She didn't know how he'd found out. But her poker face was good.

"Damien — I'm sorry, I misunderstood — I was scared, please let go of my hair —"

"It hurts —"

She could feel her scalp on fire. Her face was going purple. She nearly blacked out.

The moment before she did, he dropped her.

"Lying to me has a cost, Vivienne."

His face — she had never seen him look like that.

Her heart stuttered.

She forced a smile. "Damien, what's wrong with you?"

"I didn't know anything happened to Seraphina. I'm traumatized from the kidnapping, I saw someone outside my room earlier and I panicked —"

Damien stood up from the chair. His hand closed around her throat.

"Ah —"

She looked up into his eyes and saw nothing there. Just the violence, no mask on it.

She had no doubt he was going to kill her.