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chapter five
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2025-11-28 19:46:18Chapter Five
The Room Behind the Piano Sienna never forgot Damien’s warning. “There’s a room in this house. Locked. Everyone says it doesn’t exist. Don’t ever go near it.” But those words had the opposite effect. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Where was it? Why was it locked? And why did Damien look terrified when he mentioned it? She began to observe more closely. The mansion was ancient, too large for one family. Hallways stretched like veins, and there were places no one ever went—dusty corridors, creaking stairwells, doors sealed shut as though the very air behind them had been forgotten. And then she noticed something strange. The piano. It sat in the east wing. Elegant, black, and untouched. One afternoon, while dusting the baseboards (a chore she was still expected to do as if she were a maid, not a wife), she noticed the pattern of the floor tiles beneath the piano didn’t match the rest of the marble flooring. Curious, she knelt and traced the edges. Hollow. Her heart thumped. Later that night, when everyone had gone to sleep, she crept back to the east wing. The silence was thick. Her hands shook as she pushed the piano just enough to reveal a faint seam in the wall behind it. A door. No knob. No keyhole. But there was a symbol—a carved insignia in the wood. A serpent coiled around a rose. Westwood's old crest. She placed her palm on it. The wall clicked. And the door slid open. --- Inside, dust floated in the air like forgotten memories. The room was dim, lit only by the sliver of moonlight coming from a high window. A single bed. A child’s bookshelf. Posters of vintage cars. A cracked guitar in the corner. And on the desk— A stack of untouched birthday cards. “Happy 17th, Dante.” “We miss you, come back home.” “You’re still a Westwood, even if you’re gone.” Sienna’s breath caught. This wasn’t a storage room. It was a shrine. Dante’s room. Preserved. Frozen in time. She walked deeper, gently touching the desk. Then something caught her eye—a thick leather journal, tucked beneath an old toy car. She opened it. --- May 14th “They don’t know. No one knows. I saw the file. Dad paid them off. The crash was covered. But Damien... he blames himself. He shouldn’t.” May 23rd “Eleanor said if I disappear, Damien can finally become heir. Maybe that’s what they all want. Maybe that’s why no one cares what really happened.” June 3rd “They keep watching me. I think someone’s been reading my journal.” June 5th “If anything happens to me, it wasn’t an accident.” --- The final entry stopped her heart. June 10th “They told me to leave town. To go overseas and never return. They gave me a new name. But this isn’t my choice. This is exile.” He didn’t die? He was forced to leave? Her head spun. Then— The door slammed behind her. She gasped and spun around. Damien stood in the doorway, shadowed and unreadable. “You weren’t supposed to find this room,” he said. Sienna clutched the journal. “Damien… he’s alive, isn’t he?” He didn’t respond. Instead, he stepped inside and locked the door behind him. “You want to know everything?” he said. “Then you better be ready for the truth.” --- Flashback — Six Years Ago The Westwood mansion was a battlefield. Dante Westwood had always been the golden boy. Charismatic. Gifted. Loved. But he made one mistake. He fell in love with the wrong girl. And she was promised to someone else— To Damien. Eleanor Westwood had made that deal with her family long ago. Damien never cared about her, but to the Westwoods, bloodlines mattered. Mergers mattered. And Dante's heart got in the way of legacy. So Eleanor gave him a choice. Leave… or be buried under the weight of a scandal that would ruin everything. And Damien? He watched it all happen. He watched them tear his brother apart. He watched his mother cover up the truth. He watched his father erase Dante from existence. And he did nothing. --- Back in the present “I was a coward,” Damien whispered. Sienna stared at him. “Why didn’t you go after him?” “Because he told me not to,” Damien said, voice cracking. “He said if I stayed, I could protect what he left behind.” “What did he leave behind?” Damien looked at her like the answer was obvious. “Me.” --- For the first time, she saw Damien—not as the cold, vicious man who slept around and ignored her—but as the broken boy who watched his brother be exiled to protect him. Everything made sense now. The self-destruction. The anger. The obsession with control. Because deep down… Damien hated himself. --- “I’m not supposed to care about you,” Damien murmured, stepping closer. “But I do. That’s why I keep pushing you away. Because I destroy everything I care about.” “You won’t destroy me,” Sienna whispered. He stared at her, eyes dark with guilt, pain, longing. And then, for the first time— He didn’t walk away. He pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her neck. But Sienna didn’t smile. Because she knew something he didn’t. When she opened Dante’s journal… one page had been missing. A page torn out. And whoever tore it out… was still watching them both.
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CRUEL OBSESSION 72
CHAPTER 72 — THE FIRST MOVE The warehouse felt alive. Not in the sense of warmth or comfort, but like a creature waiting for the right moment to strike. Concrete floors reflected the faint light from the skylights above, throwing long shadows that seemed to stretch toward Sienna with every step. She adjusted her stance, heels silent against the floor. Her fingers brushed the edge of her jacket—not because she planned to pull anything, but because the gesture anchored her. Damien stayed close, shadowing her, his presence heavy with unspoken protection. He didn’t need to speak. His eyes alone reminded her: You are not alone. But you are not untouchable. Across the room, Dante studied them both. Leaning casually against a steel beam, he looked every inch the predator: calm, composed, dangerous. But tonight, there was something else in his gaze—a spark that made Sienna’s pulse quicken with anticipation, not fear. Cassandra moved behind the monitors near the far wall, alert. Isabelle
CRUEL OBSESSION 71
CHAPTER 71 — COLLISION COURSE The next morning, the house felt heavier than usual. Not ominous in the supernatural sense—but like the air had been compressed, condensed by expectation, by the knowledge that everything would change today. Sienna sensed it the moment she stepped out of her room. Guards were tighter, eyes sharper. Damien moved differently—less relaxed, more like a panther coiled, ready to spring. And she matched him, consciously, because the second she faltered, Dante would notice. She met Damien in the breakfast room. The table was set, everything perfectly aligned as usual, but the tension made the air almost brittle. Even the silverware seemed like it might bite. “No one’s touching food,” Damien muttered. “Eat fast or don’t eat at all.” Sienna picked up a piece of toast and nibbled carefully, ignoring the tightness in her stomach. Her mind was already replaying last night—the controlled confrontation, Dante’s surprise, her own confidence radiating in a way she ha
CRUEL OBSESSION 70
CHAPTER 70 — THE MOMENT SHE STOPS ASKING The trap wasn’t baited with blood. That was the mistake everyone would’ve expected Damien Westwood to make. Instead, it was baited with access. Sienna didn’t learn that until she was already inside it. The room Damien chose was one of the oldest wings of the house—stone walls, high ceilings, no cameras except the ones he couldn’t admit existed. It smelled faintly of wood polish and something older, something like history refusing to fade. “You understand what this means,” Damien said, standing across from her. She nodded. “You give him a window.” “And in return,” he continued, “he tries to crawl through it.” Sienna clasped her hands behind her back, grounding herself. “I’m not walking in blind.” “No,” Damien agreed. “You’re walking in watched.” She almost smiled at that. They stood there for a moment—two people who had already crossed lines neither of them could name anymore. This wasn’t romance. This wasn’t fear. This was consent
CRUEL OBSESSION 69
⸻ CHAPTER 69 — WHAT POWER ASKS FOR The first rule Damien gave her was simple. Never assume you’re alone. Sienna learned it the hard way—by noticing the absence of sound. No footsteps. No murmurs from the guards outside her door. No soft hum of the house settling into itself. Just quiet. Thick. Intentional. She sat up in bed slowly, heart steady but alert. The lights were still on. The door was still locked. But something had shifted. She reached for the burner phone instinctively. No new messages. That didn’t mean anything. It meant everything. She stood, pulling on boots, movements deliberate. Fear made people sloppy. She refused to give Dante that satisfaction. When she opened the door, Damien was already there. “You felt it too,” he said. “Yes.” They didn’t explain it to each other. They didn’t need to. They walked side by side down the corridor, the house revealing itself inch by inch—corners intact, windows sealed, guards posted but tense. Everyone felt it. No
CRUEL OBSESSION 68
CHAPTER 68 — THE WEIGHT OF BEING SEEN Sienna realized something was wrong before anyone said a word. It wasn’t the guards—there were always guards. It wasn’t the locked doors—those had become routine. It was the attention. The way eyes followed her now, not with dismissal or irritation, but with calculation. She had crossed from tolerated presence to active variable. And everyone felt it. She moved through the hallway slowly, deliberately, refusing to rush even as her nerves buzzed beneath her skin. Rushing was weakness. Dante would smell it. The house would feel it. She reached the sitting room and stopped short. Charles Westwood was there. So was Reginald St. Claire. Her father. The sight of him hit her harder than any threat Dante could send. Reginald stood stiffly near the window, hands clasped behind his back, his expression unreadable in that familiar, distant way that had defined most of her childhood. He looked older than she remembered. Smaller. Or maybe she had si
CRUEL OBSESSION 67
CHAPTER 67 — THE SILENCE BEFORE HE STRIKES The phone didn’t ring again. That was worse. Sienna sat on the edge of the bed long after Damien left the room, the burner phone resting on the nightstand like a live thing—quiet, waiting, smug in its stillness. Dante didn’t need to say anything else. He had already said enough. I see you. I can reach you. I’m patient. She hated how calm that made him feel in her bones. The house shifted into lockdown mode without anyone needing to say the word. Doors were secured. Guards doubled. Routes were altered. Damien’s men moved like pieces on a board only he could see. Sienna watched it all from the margins, the way she always had. But this time, she wasn’t invisible. She was the reason. She went to Annabelle’s room just after midnight. Her mother slept peacefully, chest rising and falling beneath thin blankets, IV lines humming softly beside her. For a moment, Sienna allowed herself to imagine a future where this was all over—where Anna
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