Chapter 13 — "Damon's Response"

The boardroom smelled like ozone and expensive cologne. Damon stood at the window with his back to the room, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone. Outside, October rain streaked down the glass, turning the city into a smear of gray and amber.

His head of PR, Margot, was still talking. He'd stopped listening three minutes ago.

"She's not answering calls, sir. Her team confirmed she saw the article. We need a statement from you or from her before the five o'clock news cycle—"

"Get the cameras."

Margot stopped. "Sir?"

"The press room. Thirty minutes. Have the networks dial in." He turned from the window. His face was unreadable. "I'll handle it."

"Sir, with respect, you can't just—I don't know what you're planning, but if you say the wrong thing, this could escalate into—"

"I said I'll handle it."

Margot closed her mouth. She'd worked for him for seven years. She knew that tone.

He walked past her without another word.

---

The press room smelled like stale coffee and nervous sweat. Damon stood behind the podium, hands flat on either side, watching the cameras lock onto him. He'd changed into a charcoal suit. No tie. The top button of his shirt undone. He looked like a man who'd been interrupted mid-preparation and decided he didn't care.

Someone in the front row coughed.

Damon leaned into the microphone.

"I'm not doing a prepared statement," he said. "I'm doing this once. Record it if you need to. Take notes. I don't care."

He paused. Let the silence sit.

"Aurelia Chen is my partner."

The room went still. A few reporters exchanged glances.

"In business. In life. Anyone who implies otherwise—anyone who suggests she built NovaTech on anything other than her own goddamn intelligence—will hear from my legal team. And anyone who hurts her"—his voice dropped, the words curving like a blade—"will hear from me personally."

He stepped back from the podium.

"That's all."

He was halfway to the door when someone shouted, "Mr. Kincaid! What about the allegations regarding her past—"

Damon stopped. Turned. Just his head.

"I haven't asked about her past," he said. "Because it's none of my business. And it's *certainly* none of yours."

He walked out.

---

Aurelia watched the footage in her hotel suite, curled into a corner of the sofa with her laptop balanced on her knees. She'd pulled up the livestream without thinking. Without admitting she was looking.

She watched him say the words. Watched him walk out. Watched the news anchor cut to a panel of analysts floundering for context.

She played it again.

*"Aurelia Chen is my partner."*

Again.

*"In business. In life."*

Again.

She closed the laptop.

Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs until they stopped.

She didn't cry. She hadn't cried since the rejection, and she wasn't about to start now. But something cracked in her chest anyway—a fissure running through the wall she'd spent three years building. Thin. Fine. Almost invisible.

She hated that he'd done it without asking her.

She hated that she'd watched it five times.

She hated that she couldn't tell which feeling was stronger.

---

Damon found her in his office at nine that night.

She was sitting in his chair. Her chair, technically—his leather desk chair, the one he'd spent thousands on because his back was shit from decades of sleeping in cars and on couches. She had her knees pulled up, feet on the seat, arms wrapped around her shins. She looked small. She looked like a woman who'd been running for years and just now stopped.

"You didn't ask," she said.

"I know."

"You didn't warn me."

"I know."

"Everyone in that room thinks we're—" She stopped. Swallowed. "They think I'm your—they think you're *claiming* me, like I'm something to be claimed, like I don't have a say—"

"You do."

She looked up at him. Her eyes were dry. Bright.

"I'm not a possession, Damon."

"I know."

"Then why did you—"

"Because I'd do it again." He stepped closer. Stopped at the edge of his desk—her desk, they'd have to figure out whose desk it was now. "Every time. If I had to choose between watching you get dragged through the mud and making an assumption about what you'd want me to do, I'd take the assumption. I'd take the consequences. I'd take your anger. I'd take *any* of it before I'd sit back and let them talk about you like that."

She stared at him.

He stared back.

The silence stretched. Filled the room. Pressed against the walls.

"I'm going to tell you something," she said, "and you're going to hear it all the way through before you say anything."

He nodded.

"I've been alone for three years. I've built a company. I've pulled myself out of a hole so deep I didn't think I'd see the sun again. I'm good at being alone. I've made peace with it."

She unfolded her legs. Set her feet on the floor.

"But I came to your office tonight. I was angry. I was ready to tear you apart. And then I sat in this chair and I watched that clip on mute, just your face, just your mouth moving, and I realized—"

She stopped.

Her voice cracked. Just once.

"I realized I don't want to be alone anymore."

Damon didn't move. Didn't breathe.

"And that *terrifies* me."

She stood. Crossed the distance between them.

Her hand came up. Resting against his chest. He could feel her palm through his shirt, warm, small, steady.

"I don't know what this is," she said. "I don't know what you want from me. I don't know what I'm allowed to want. But I'm tired of running, Damon. I'm so fucking tired."

He covered her hand with his.

"Then stop running."

It wasn't a command.

It was an invitation.

---

Outside, the rain kept falling. The city moved on. Reporters filed their stories. Lucian Blackwood sat in Moonlight City with a stack of falsified medical records spread across his desk, his hands shaking, the truth pressing against his ribs like a blade he'd swallowed years ago and was only now beginning to feel.

He didn't know yet that the woman he'd condemned to three years of silence had just chosen someone else.

Someone human.

Someone who had never once considered letting her go.