Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Seraphina had started as his private assistant.
When he'd decided he wanted her, he'd sent 99 handwritten letters and 999 white roses before she'd finally agreed to try.
Two years of dating. He'd done everything to keep her.
The first time she walked into his world — a Sotheby's charity gala — one of the heirs mocked her for being poor. Damien outbid every single lot that night and gave them all to her. Publicly claimed her.
When anyone gave her grief, he'd walk out of a hundred-million-dollar meeting to stand behind her.
When she was sick, he'd fly across the country and come home to take care of her himself.
Her family was middle-class. Too ordinary for the Thornes. They'd demanded he break it off and get engaged to Vivienne Ashcroft, the childhood friend. He'd fought back. They'd locked him in the estate, sent him overseas, done everything short of disowning him. He wouldn't give her up. In the end, he walked away from his spot as primary heir in the Thorne trust just to get them to sign off on the marriage.
They'd won. They'd gotten married.
And she'd thought, after all of it, they were finally safe.
Until last year. When Vivienne came home from her residency abroad.
Vivienne was spoiled. Damien indulged her.
Vivienne struggled at work. Damien managed her career.
When a few of Vivienne's surgeries went sideways and angry families started harassing her, Damien didn't like the security risk, so he drove her to and from her night shifts himself. Then, without asking, he just moved her into their house.
Three months ago, Seraphina's mother had a cardiac event. Vivienne insisted on operating personally, to prove something. Made a bet with a colleague that she could do it one-handed.
That was the night they wheeled her mother in.
By the time Seraphina got the call and reached the hospital, Vivienne was running out of the building in tears, leaving the rest of the team scrambling to save what she'd broken. Her mother came out of it a vegetable.
She'd begged Damien to help her. He wouldn't even talk about it. He stood there and watched her fall apart.
Three months of running, screaming, begging. Vivienne paid nothing. Seraphina lost everything. Her brother was sitting in a cell.
"Sera. Have you thought it over?"
His brow creased with impatience. He glanced at his watch. "Mom can't wait."
She broke.
The tears she'd been holding back spilled out. She grabbed the phone with shaking hands, jaw clenched.
"I'll do it. I won't press charges. I'll say whatever you want. Just save my mother. Please. She can't die."
Her hands shook so hard she almost dropped the phone.
Damien gently wiped her tears, then opened the recording app for her himself.
Thirty seconds. She withdrew the complaint. Called it a tragic accident.
When she handed him the phone back, her whole body was limp.
"Can they operate on my mom now?"
Finally, he exhaled. "Starting now."
He hadn't even finished the word.
From the OR down the hall, Vivienne suddenly cried out. "Oh — I'm so dizzy."
Then she crumpled.
Damien bolted. He swept her into his arms and rushed her out, the trailing medical staff swarming after them — leaving Seraphina's mother abandoned on her gurney.
The alarms were still screaming. Tears burst out of Seraphina. She ran after him, sobbing.
"Don't go — save my mom — please —"
"Damien, you promised! You can't leave!"
She threw herself in front of him. He didn't even see her. His eyes were only on Vivienne. He carried her past Seraphina into the next trauma room with the team behind him.
Feet rushed over her where she'd fallen. She couldn't even finish a sentence through the pain.
Too late.
She sobbed, wild and broken, and crawled toward Damien's feet. He kicked her out of the way.
"Vivienne, don't be scared. I'm coming."
He'd kicked her so hard she flew. Her head cracked against the wall.
Through the blur, her eyes found her mother's body on the gurney. Barely breathing.
Something inside her tore into pieces.
"Mom. Mom."
The sound of her head hitting the wall finally made Damien glance back.
He pointed two of the junior doctors into her mother's room.
"Your mother won't die. I keep my promises."
"But right now, nothing is getting between me and saving Vivienne."
The room went dark at the edges.
Right before she blacked out, there was only one thought left in her head.
She was going to leave.
She was going to vanish from Damien Thorne's world so completely that he would never find her again.