Chapter 6

Damien’s POV

I know exactly what I just heard her say.

She said it.

I know she did.

Her mouth moved, soft and deliberate, a whisper carried like smoke across glass, and I saw it. I read it. I’ve spent years watching lips lie on screens, trained to catch the tiniest betrayal, and I know the shape of a name when it’s true, when it claws its way out of memory and onto skin.

Elma.

She turns from the mirror as if nothing has shifted, walks to the kitchen, pours herself a glass of water, and slides back into silence like she hasn’t just shattered a lock inside me, a lock I thought rusted shut, a lock I swore would never open again unless by a ghost.

She has no idea what she just did.

I move before I even register my own body, down the hall, around the corner, propelled by something deeper than reason, by a name I promised I would never hear again except from a grave.

She’s barefoot when I reach her, still clutching the glass, still fragile in the calm that doesn’t belong to this moment, and she turns to me, mouth half-open in surprise, not fear, and it makes my chest tighten, makes my hands ache for something I don’t want to call mercy.

I close the space in a single step, and my hand wraps around her throat before her eyes can fully understand the storm that has arrived.

I don’t squeeze yet. I just hold. I just anchor. I just want to feel the name vibrate under her skin before it dies in the air, before she denies it.

“Damien”

“What did you just say?” My voice is calm, too calm, the kind of calm that doesn’t belong to someone holding a chain in their chest.

She stiffens. Her fingers brush my wrist.

“W-what?”

And that’s what makes it worse, because either she’s lying, or she doesn’t remember, and both possibilities sound like screaming behind my ribs, like a chain tearing free inside me, rattling against bones that are too old to bend.

I lean closer, closer enough that she can taste the heat coming off me, the heat of years waiting for this impossible whisper.

“The name,” I say, and my grip steals a fraction of her breath, just enough for panic to taste like confession. “What. Did. You. Just. Say?”

She goes still. Eyes wide. Lips trembling like fragile glass. She doesn’t understand. Or she’s pretending not to. I don’t know which is worse.

“Please,” she whispers, and it’s almost enough to undo me, almost enough to make me drop the hand I swore I would never lift without truth. “I didn’t say anything”

“Don’t lie to me.” My fingers tighten, and I feel her knees weaken. The shake in her throat presses against my palm the same way I felt my own when I was eight, when I begged silently in corners, when I swore I’d never cry in front of the world.

It doesn’t stop me.

“You looked at the glass,” I say softly. “You mouthed a name.”

“I…I didn’t. I swear…”

I slam her back against the kitchen island, and the glass shatters beside us, spilling water over tile and fragments that cut like tiny betrayals, and still I don’t let go. I want the truth, and I want it now.

“You said ‘Elma.’”

She shakes her head violently, eyes brimming, lips trembling. “No! No, I didn’t I didn’t say that..”

“Then what did you say?” I demand, my voice low and dangerous, full of need and suspicion that burns hotter than desire. “Say it. Out loud.”

“I said…” she sobs, gasping, and the syllables tear from her like blood from a wound. “…I said Aria , my name

It hits me like static, makes the floor shift beneath my sanity, and I loosen my grip just enough to let her breathe, but I don’t step back, not yet, because my body remembers how to hunt.

Maybe I was imagining it, I could have swore I heard her say that name. “Are you sure?” I asked again

She nods again, tears spilling like rivers over fragile skin. I want to believe her. I need to believe her, because if she said Elma and doesn’t know why, the world shifts beneath me, and I’m not strong enough to catch it without breaking.

I step back and release her fully. She collapses to the floor, coughing, lungs desperate for air, and I don’t reach for her, don’t speak, don’t break the silence that hums with danger. I walk away like she isn’t trembling behind me, like the chain rattling inside my chest isn’t fraying the edge of control I’ve fought so hard to maintain.

The office door slams behind me, a final punctuation to the chaos, and silence crashes instantly. I sit. Pour a drink. Then another.

I replay the footage. Again. Frame by frame. Slow. Meticulous. Obsessed. Her lips shape the name the way Elma’s used to, delicate, private, a whisper meant for no one, a ghost of the past.

El-ma.

Two syllables, too sharp, too clear, too alive.

But if she said her name it would look the same. Almost the same. And that almost is enough to drive a man mad.

She could’ve said m Aria. She could’ve lied. She could’ve said nothing at all and my eyes would have betrayed me.

That terrifies me more than bullets, more than fire, more than the nights I spent bleeding while swearing I would never become this.

Because I was a protector once, a boy who swore to a crying girl that no one would ever take her, and I broke that promise. I broke it with silence, with distraction, with fear, with shame that tasted like acid on my tongue.

The last night Elma came to me, she carried a stuffed bear and whispered, “Can I sleep in here tonight? Mom’s not home.”

I didn’t look. I didn’t care. I told her I was busy, and she left, and I never stopped her, and I carried that weight like a weapon that was mine and mine alone.

So when I heard Aria speak a name even if it wasn’t hers I saw Elma, small and trembling, eyes too wide for the darkness. And I became something uglier than anything I’ve ever let myself be. Not because of her, not because I hated her, but because I hated myself for every failure, every moment I let life slip through my fingers.

There’s a crack now that I can’t close, a fracture in the parts of me I thought immutable. I lit the match, pressed it to her throat, and still I cannot tell if I was right or if the world is simply cruel enough to make me doubt every instinct, every truth I’ve held onto.

Even after choking her, even after scaring her, even after leaving her on the floor, shaking and gasping, I still want her, crave her, need her like air I cannot breathe.

Because when I look at her, I don’t just see a girl I bought.

In her I see the one I couldn’t save.

And I swear to God

I won’t fail again.