Elena's POV
The photographs were everywhere by noon.
I found out from Clara, who knocked on my new bedroom door, a proper bedroom this time, in the east wing of the Blackwood estate, where I'd been delivered three hours after breakfast like a parcel Damian had ordered and couldn't quite be bothered to unpack himself.
He'd shown me to the room, told me dinner was at seven and disappeared.
That was it.
No tour, no explanation of the house rules. No conversation about what yesterday meant or what today was supposed to look like. Just room, dinner, seven. As if I'd been on his schedule for years and had simply forgotten.
I spent the first hour sitting on the edge of the enormous bed refusing to be impressed by it.
The second hour, I caved in and explored.
The room was the size of my entire old apartment. Floor-to-ceiling drapes in charcoal and cream. A writing desk by the window that overlooked the estate gardens, still waterlogged from last night's rain. A wardrobe already fully stocked, I checked and my stomach tightened because these weren't borrowed clothes. They were new. My size. My actual style, which was unsettling because I didn't remember telling anyone my style.
He'd anticipated this.
He'd anticipated me.
That thought had barely finished forming when my door opened without a knock.
I spun around.
Marcus stood in the doorway.
For a long, terrible moment we just looked at each other. He was still in last night's clothes. Eyes slightly red. Jaw tight with something that couldn't decide between rage and humiliation.
"You actually did it," he said.
I kept my voice even. "Close the door, Marcus."
"You married my father."
"We signed a contract. There's a difference."
"Don't." He stepped inside, voice dropping to something uglier. "Don't play word games with me. I know what he's doing. He's using you to get at me."
"Well." I tilted my head. "Funny how that feels, isn't it?"
He flinched. Good.
"Elena…."
"You stood on a stage last night," I said, and my voice stayed steady, which surprised me. I'd expected it to shake. "In front of everyone. With fake photos and a microphone. And you destroyed two years." I paused. "So whatever speech you've prepared for this moment please save it."
"I had reasons."
"I'm sure you did."
"You don't understand what's been happening with the company….."
"I don't care." I walked to the door and held it open. "Get out of my room."
His face shifted, jaw tightening, something calculating moving behind his eyes. I'd seen that look before. I'd mistaken it for passion once.
"You think he's on your side?" Marcus said softly. "You think he brought you here out of guilt? He doesn't feel guilt. He doesn't feel anything."
"Funny. He felt enough to write a fidelity clause in his own handwriting."
Marcus went very still.
"He what?"
"Goodnight, Marcus."
"He doesn't….he wouldn't…." Marcus stepped closer, and for one second something real cracked through his expression, not anger but actual pain. "He's never done that. For anyone."
"Then maybe," I said quietly, "you should have thought harder before making me his problem."
I held the door.
He left.
I closed it behind him and stood very still, listening to his footsteps disappear down the hall. My hands were shaking slightly, I pressed them flat against the door until they stopped.
Then I went to find Damian.
— — —
He wasn't hard to find. The light was on in a room two floors up, a study, from the look of it and the door was half open, I knocked on the frame.
He was at his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, reading something on a tablet. He looked up.
"You're not at dinner," he said.
"It's four o'clock."
"I meant you're not resting before dinner."
"Marcus came to my room."
Something went very still behind his eyes.
"He came through the main hall?" he asked carefully.
"He walked straight in. No knock."
Damian set the tablet down slowly. Stood. Walked to the window with his back to me, and I watched the set of his shoulders go rigid and then….. deliberately, visibly…. release.
"That won't happen again," he said.
"I handled it."
He turned. "I know you did. I'm not questioning that."
"Then why do you look like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you're deciding whether to be angry on my behalf and trying to talk yourself out of it."
A pause.
"Because you don't need me to be angry on your behalf," he said. "You made that very clear this morning."
I crossed the room and stopped at the edge of his desk, putting it between us out of habit… or instinct, I wasn't sure which.
"He said you're using me," I said. "To punish him."
"I told you that myself."
"He said it's the only reason."
"What do you think?"
I studied him. The rolled sleeves, the slight looseness in his posture that this room produced in him that the rest of the estate didn't. He was more human here, in this space that was clearly his, surrounded by books and work and the evidence of a mind that never fully stopped.
"I think," I said slowly, "that you are using me. Partly. I think that part is real."
He said nothing.
"And I think there's another part you haven't named yet."
Still nothing.
"Both," I said.
His jaw tightened.
"You said that last night," I continued. "Both. You watched me for Marcus's reasons and for your own. I've been thinking about that all day."
He came around the desk slowly, not rushing, never rushing.
He stopped just inside arm's reach, close enough to be deliberate, far enough to be deniable.
"You have a habit," he said quietly, "of asking questions you're not entirely ready to hear the answers to."
"Try me."
He searched my face for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes…. something older and more complicated than anything Marcus had ever shown me.
"You reminded me," he said finally, "of someone."
"Who?"
"Someone I lost."
The room went quiet.
"Your wife," I said.
He didn't confirm it. He didn't deny it. He just looked at me with that expression I was slowly learning to read, the one that said he'd given me something and he was waiting to see what I'd do with it.
I took a step back. Gave him the space back.
"Seven o'clock," I said.
"Yes."
I walked to the door.
"Elena."
I stopped.
"Lock your door tonight," he said. "I'll have the codes changed in the morning."
Not….. don't worry, it won't happen again. Not a promise. A precaution.
He was already thinking about the next problem.
I didn't know whether that made me feel safer.
Or more afraid.
— — —
I did lock the door.
And at two in the morning, when I heard footsteps pause outside it, unhurried, brief, then moving on… I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and told myself it was nothing.
The footsteps didn't come back.
But I didn't sleep for another hour.