Chapter 21

Aria’s POV

And I just sat there, helpless, the world narrowing to the point of my skin where every small thing felt amplified the distant hum of traffic, the soft click of the lock sliding into place, the faint tick of the heater until the moment itself seemed to press into me like a weight. Nothing. There was nothing I could do; not a single plan rose up inside me that had the courage to move my limbs or the voice to break the silence.

I couldn’t scream; the sound lodged at the back of my throat and turned to something hard and round that would not pass. I couldn’t hit him; the idea of swinging my arms felt like borrowing someone else’s courage and returning it before it even landed. I couldn’t run; the door and the corridor and the city beyond blurred into a map I had lost the language to read.

When he raised his hand I went still as wood rooted, dry, the motion happening outside of me like a film playing in another room. When he pushed me I folded inward the way paper creases the line made and permanent, impossible to smooth back again.

When he treated me like trash I assumed the same bent form he offered, sinking into it with a horrible ease until each edge of me felt worn and predictable under his hands.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I always belonged to some man, some shape that took me in without asking and kept me in place by naming me as his.

I had been sold before countless times to men like him the memory of it was concrete, as sharp and cold as the metal of a register, and it sat under my ribs like a stone hot and heavy and impossible to swallow so that every breath I pulled felt measured against that weight. I was the girl who had been moved from hand to hand and I had learned the language of transactions more fluently than I had learned the sound of my own name, and the syllables of exchange lived in my bones longer than any lullaby.

Two men were dead because of me.

Two.

I said the number in my head until it drummed against my skull and made the world tilt. One body had fallen on concrete and stopped i had watched the light leave him, seen the life in his face flatten and slide away like something that could not find purchase. I had watched the wet spread beneath his cheek and take the floor’s shape as if the room itself were swallowing him. The other death felt different in my memory darker, quick, the end of a sentence that closed with no fanfare and I refused to fit a name to it because naming would make it solid, and making it solid would be like handing it over.

If Damien knew the truth he would not regard it gently. If he were given those names he would not keep anything tidy he would unpick and unravel until there was nothing left but raw edges. He would tear through people and places with the efficiency of someone cleaning a wound until it bled clean, indifferent to what lay in the path. He had the eyes of a judge cold and unblinking and hands that read like an execution I had watched him in anger and learned the architecture of his ruin so well that I could predict the way his shoulders would gather before he moved.

So I kept my mouth shut. I kept the names tucked behind my teeth like teeth themselves hard, secret, and dangerous if exposed.

The penthouse felt too big and empty in the way of places that have been dressed for strangers. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the city below like an aquarium of lights that never slept, and none of those lights knew me. Only the lock on the door remembered the shape of my hand it clicked behind me and the noise was final and small and then there was only the hush.

I pressed my palms to my face until the skin warmed and the ache where his hand had hit me flared like an accusation the mark burned and stung, proof that the moment had been real and not a phantom of my own mind. Proof that I had been here, proof that I had been struck, proof that my body had kept the ledger of violence. My cheek was hot and my mouth tasted metallic and foreign, as if someone else’s blood had been mixed into my saliva.

I sat on the edge of the bed and folded my arms tight until my shoulders protested; if silence was armor, I had learned to do it without elegance, without ceremony, without wanting to. I had learned how to make myself small and blank and still because small things tended to survive, and silence was not noble it was currency, a payment made to buy time and calm.

I thought of them both those two men and their images came at me in halves one bright and violent and impossible to soften, the other a closed, dark thing I would not let myself name. They clung to me like labels stitched to skin, and every attempt to smooth them away only made them prickle more.

I told myself the same thing I always told myself when the room tightened keep him safe. Keep Damien safe from the truth. Keep whatever I had hidden from him, because if he ever had those names in his mouth he would burn the world down with them. I had seen men like him men who burned first and asked questions later and I knew what his kind of punishment tasted like.

I needed him to want me. I needed him to hold me. I needed him to be the man who stood in front of danger and said no, who could be the shield when everything else was a spark because he could stand when others fell, because his presence felt like something that might anchor me even if it anchored me with teeth.

So I sat and counted my breaths slow, steady in, out; in, out each one a small stitch sewing me back to myself, each one a rhythm that kept me from pulling apart in that moment.