Two weeks. Fourteen days. To the world it was a small fragment of time, nothing more than a handful of sunrises and sunsets. But to Damian Knight, each day had been an eternity. Each hour a battlefield he fought alone. Each minute a fresh reminder that Amara was gone.
The search had ended with nothing. Divers had combed the ocean for days, but the waters gave no answers, no clues. No trace of her, no sign of the car, nothing that could quiet the storm raging inside him. The silence of the ocean had been the loudest cruelty of all.
Since that day, Damian had changed. The man who once walked into rooms with a commanding aura now carried a darkness that unsettled even his closest allies. His suits were still immaculate, his posture still straight, but the warmth and fire that once defined him were gone. His presence felt heavier, colder, as if grief had frozen every part of him.
The office was the first to notice. Where Damian used to stride through the building with sharp focus and occasional hints of charm, now he moved like a ghost. Meetings were cut short or canceled altogether. When he did attend, his answers were clipped, his eyes hollow. He no longer argued strategy, no longer debated vision. He simply signed papers as if they were meaningless.
Eric, his loyal assistant, bore the brunt of his silence. He would knock gently, enter with files, and be met with Damian's stone-like gaze. "Leave it on the desk," Damian would mutter, his voice stripped of life. Eric obeyed, but each time he left the office, his chest tightened at the sight of his boss unraveling.
Whispers spread among the staff.
"He doesn't smile anymore," one said.
"He used to at least acknowledge us. Now it's like we don't exist."
"Do you think she's really gone?" another dared to whisper, only to hush quickly when Damian passed by.
Damian didn't care what they said. Their words were distant echoes. His world had collapsed into a single truth: Amara was missing, and he had failed her.
At home, the transformation was even starker. His penthouse, once alive with her presence, had become a mausoleum. Amara's scarf still hung over the back of the sofa. Her mug remained in the kitchen, untouched, a faint stain of lipstick on the rim. Damian couldn't bring himself to move them. To do so would be to admit she might never return.
Every night was the same torment. He would pour himself a glass of whiskey, sit by the floor-to-ceiling windows, and stare out at the glittering city below. The lights mocked him, each one a reminder that life carried on without her. He barely drank-just held the glass, letting the amber liquid catch the glow of the skyline. His hand would tremble sometimes, not from weakness, but from the weight of memory.
Sleep was a stranger. When exhaustion finally dragged him under, his dreams were cruel. He saw Amara smiling, calling his name. He reached for her, but she would always slip away, swallowed by shadows. Damian woke each time drenched in sweat, his chest heaving, only to be met by the cold emptiness of his bed. He stopped turning on the lights. Darkness felt more honest.
Food held no meaning. The chefs he employed would prepare meals, but Damian hardly touched them. Plates went back untouched, until they stopped cooking altogether. He lived on coffee and whiskey, his once athletic frame growing leaner, sharper. The man who had once been the image of power now looked like a king hollowed out by grief.
The media circled like vultures, speculating about Amara's disappearance and Damian's silence. Headlines screamed about the "Billionaire in Mourning." Paparazzi camped outside his building. Damian tolerated them for one day. On the second, when one reporter dared to shout Amara's name, Damian stormed forward, his hand clenching the man's camera. He smashed it against the ground, his voice like thunder: "Say her name again, and I'll end you." After that, no one dared approach him again.
Memories were his tormentors. He remembered the way her laugh rang out like music. The stubborn tilt of her chin when she challenged him. The softness of her lips against his when she finally let her guard down. He replayed their arguments, their reconciliations, the way she looked at him like she truly saw him-not Damian the billionaire, but Damian the man.
Now, those memories were daggers. Each one cut deeper, because he feared he would never make new ones with her.
He tried drowning himself in work once, spending twenty hours straight in the office. But it didn't last. Every file reminded him of her-how she used to walk in with her designs, how she brought color into the gray world of business. Without her, the work was hollow. Money and power meant nothing if he couldn't share them with her.
His men continued the search. Teams scoured remote towns, docks, and forests. Private investigators worked around the clock. Damian spared no expense. But each time they returned with nothing, he grew colder. "Try harder," he ordered. "Look deeper." His voice carried no hope, only command. He would not allow them to stop. He refused to believe she was simply gone.
But deep inside, the fear gnawed at him. What if she was dead? The thought froze his veins. He couldn't say it out loud, couldn't accept it. To accept it would be to bury himself alive.
Two weeks. It felt like two centuries.
To outsiders, Damian Knight was colder than ever-heartless, merciless, untouchable. But the truth was far crueler. He wasn't heartless. His heart was in chains, buried under grief, waiting for Amara to unlock it again. Until then, he lived only because he had no choice.
The empire he built, the fortune he commanded, the power he wielded-all of it meant nothing now. Damian Knight was a king without his queen, a man with everything but the one person who made life worth living.
And as the days dragged on, one truth carved itself into his soul: if he couldn't find Amara, if he couldn't bring her back, then Damian Knight was already lost.