06 Doubts in the Silence

Damien’s POV

Relief.

That was what I expected to feel when Elena walked out of my life with her suitcase, when the elevator swallowed her silhouette and the divorce papers lay signed on my coffee table.

Relief. Freedom. Vindication.

But none of it came.

Instead, the penthouse was too quiet. Her scent lingered in the hallways, soft and maddening, a reminder of nights I had convinced myself didn’t matter.

Her laughter, faint as an echo, clung to the walls. I should have been celebrating the end of her deception, but all I felt was… empty.

And that emptiness cut deeper than her lies.

I sank into the leather armchair, the signed papers spread across the table like a battlefield I had won too easily. That was the problem, wasn’t it? For years, she had fought me with her smiles, with her patience, with that relentless loyalty I hadn’t asked for but always felt. And now, when it mattered, she didn’t fight at all.

She signed without a word. No begging. No resistance.

As if I hadn’t meant anything at all.

I rubbed my temples, scowling.

Why did it sting? I should be glad she hadn’t dragged this into a public war, glad she hadn’t tried to extort me with her tears. But some twisted part of me wanted her to rage, to scream, to plead. Something to prove I mattered to her the way she had once claimed I did.

Instead, she walked away as if she’d already buried me.

It felt… unresolved. Like an unfinished sentence gnawing at my chest.

I told myself it was anger. Nothing more.

Anger that she and her mother had built their lives on my family’s blood. Anger that she had fooled me for so long. Anger that she had made this too clean, too easy, leaving me with no closure.

Still, the hollowness wouldn’t leave.

“She’ll come back,” I muttered into the silence, forcing conviction into the words. “She has nothing. No one.”

It was true. Her only family was that brother of hers, Elijah. He had barely started working at the hospital before he resigned in anger. Whatever savings they had would burn out within months. And Elena, gentle, naive Elena, she wasn’t built for this world. She wouldn’t last long without the Rothschild name shielding her.

She would crawl back. They always did.

I repeated it again, whispering it like a mantra. She’ll come back. Not because I needed her, no, never that, but because she would need me.

This was only a phase. She would learn soon enough that no one walks away from Damien Rothschild.

And yet…

The doubt slithered back in, the same doubt that had haunted me since I held her cold hand in that hospital bed.

What if she hadn’t lied?

What if the letter was wrong?

I shot to my feet, restless, pacing the length of the room. I hated this. The uncertainty. The way my chest clenched when I thought of her eyes that night, wide and wet with tears that hadn’t looked like manipulation.

I needed to see the man who wrote that letter. I needed his face, his voice, his confession. If I looked him in the eyes, if I heard him speak, the doubt would die.

Then the emptiness in my chest would finally vanish.

I pulled out my phone, scrolling until I landed on a familiar number.

“Adrian,” I said when the line picked up, my voice low. “It’s Damien.”

A chuckle rumbled from the other end. “Well, well. The great Rothschild calling me after all these years. To what do I owe the pleasure? You need dirt dug up, don’t you?”

Straight to the point. That was why I trusted him. Adrian Lang was no ordinary private investigator. He ran a firm that specialized in things the law couldn’t touch. Discreet, precise, ruthless.

“There’s a man I want,” I said flatly. “A driver. He wrote a letter that… concerns me. I want him found. Every detail. Where he lives, who paid him, what he really knows.”

Adrian whistled low. “You sound almost rattled, Damien. That’s a first.”

“Just find him,” I snapped, though my pulse betrayed me with its uneven beat.

“Consider it done. I’ll send you updates as soon as I have something concrete.”

I ended the call without another word and lowered the phone, staring at the city spread beneath my window.

Somewhere out there, Elena was alone. Somewhere out there, she was packing away pieces of the life we’d built, carrying secrets she thought I didn’t deserve to know.

I clenched my fists.

She thought this was the end.

But until I saw that driver with my own eyes, until I burned the last ember of doubt from my chest, it wasn’t over.

Not for me.

Not for her.