Chapter 2

I stared at the ceiling of my hotel room until dawn. But I felt more awake than any morning I'd ever woken up next to Damien.

I took a car back to the penthouse at the top of Chicago. The moment I walked in, I thought I was in the wrong place.

Gone was the familiar, sterile scent of antiseptic mixed with my own perfume. In its place was the cloying, expensive scent of another woman. One that made me want to gag.

I pushed open the door to what used to be my medical suite and froze.

The surgical light was gone. The steel trolley with my instruments, gone. The examination table, gone.

Instead, the walls were lined with luxury wardrobes. They were stuffed with expensive gowns and furs.

Isabella's closet.

"You're here."

Damien's voice came from behind me, sharp with impatience.

I turned. He was wearing a black silk robe, his hair still damp. Fresh from a shower.

And the angry red mark on his neck was pure Isabella. Staking her claim.

“My medical supplies?” My voice was steady, dangerously so.

“Packed away,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “She doesn’t like all that cold, sterile junk.”

Cold?

For four years, this “junk” had stitched him up, kept him breathing, and dragged him back from the brink of death more times than I could count.

I was the only reason his body was still a fortress.

And now, it was just “cold, sterile junk”?

"Where?"

Damien jerked his chin toward the service hallway. "Storage room. Get it yourself."

I followed him to the narrow hallway.

He opened the storage room door. My heart stopped.

All my things were thrown on the floor like garbage.

My custom-made instruments were snapped in half.

Rare medical texts—some of them priceless first editions—were crushed underfoot.

Vials of sterile medicine littered the floor like trash.

And the whiskey glasses we’d shared… shattered into a thousand tiny shards.

"Damien..." My voice trembled.

He leaned against the doorframe, annoyed. "Hurry up. Isabella needs this space soon."

I knelt, my hand reaching for the broken shards.

That's when I saw it. Beneath the opening of his robe.

The black rose I’d designed for his chest was gone. Covered by a raw, angry letter "I."

Isabella's "I."

"You changed the tattoo," I heard myself say. My voice was hollow, distant.

He shrugged. "Out with the old, in with the new."

He saw my numb expression and sighed.

"It was worthless. Just junk. I'll buy you new paints if you need them."

Worthless?

My gaze landed on a ruined leather journal amidst the wreckage.

The cover was torn open, revealing page after page of notes I’d kept on his recovery.

One thousand and one entries. Each one a testament to the worry I carried and the love I never dared to confess.

I gathered the ruined journal, its loose pages, and all the broken pieces of my life here.

Then, I fed it all into the incinerator chute set into the wall.

Damien's brow furrowed.

"You're right, Damien." My smile was cold. "Worthless things should be burned."

Including my stupid, inconvenient feelings.

Damien's jaw tightened.

I didn’t spare his expression a glance.

I pulled the papers from my bag—my resignation and the full transfer of his medical files.

“Sign these,” I said, my voice flat, “and we’re…”

My words were cut off by his phone.

"Babe, where are you? It's snowing and I'm going to slip! Come get me," Isabella whined through the speaker.

The anger on Damien's face vanished. He didn't even look at me. He just turned and walked away.

"Find your own way out. Text me when you're gone."

He left me alone in that cold, empty room.

The blizzard was raging when I walked out of the building.

I didn't have an umbrella. The snow was too thick to find a cab.

As I walked out of the building, my foot slipped on the ice. I went down hard, my body slamming against the frozen pavement.

My hand scraped against the jagged ice ringing a flowerbed. Blood bloomed instantly, a stark red against the white snow.

Tears instantly flooded my eyes from the searing pain.

But even then, my knuckles were white as I clutched the one thing I had left: the unsigned papers he’d refused to take.

Suddenly, a familiar armored car sped past.

It didn't slow down. Icy slush splattered all over me.

Through the window, I saw him.

Damien bowed his head, carefully adjusting Isabella as she nestled in his embrace.

He just wanted her to be more comfortable.

He held her like she was his most precious treasure.

A tenderness I hadn’t felt from him once in four years.

I clenched my jaw and pushed myself up from the frozen ground, my knee screaming in protest.

But I straightened my spine. I walked into the storm, away from him, and never looked back.