Chapter 3

Aria’s POV 

“If you save me tonight… I’ll owe you my life.”

The memory followed me into the car and I shut the door hard and sat there, breathing like I just ran for my life.

Maybe I did.

My fingers still shook around the steering wheel, the divorce papers lay on the passenger seat like a slap I had not recovered from.

And somehow, what hurt more was not even the signing.

It was her.

Lila.

Standing inside my house like she had every right, smiling at me like I was the one out of place and Damien…

God.

Damien walked past me to her like I no longer exist, I laughed under my breath, but it sounded ugly.

“So this is how I end,” I whispered to myself.

As the wife who got replaced before she even leaves, my throat tightened and I looked out through the rain-covered windshield, but all I could really see was another rainy night.

Another version of me.

One who had no idea what kind of man she was about to ruin herself for.

Three years ago.

I was standing by the roadside in a soaked dress, and I was staring at a crashed car, my heart was beating too fast, and then smoke was coming from the front of the vehicle.

One headlight flashed and inside, a man slumped over the wheel.

At first, I thought he was dead, but then he moved and I rushed forward.

“Hey!” I shouted through the rain. “Can you hear me?”

No one answered and my hands shook as I moved it at the damaged door but it refused to open.

“Please,” I whispered, more to myself than to him and I forced it harder.

This time, it gave and I finally saw him properly, blood on his forehead, blood near his ribs and his shirt was soaked through.

And yet…even bleeding, he looked dangerous, like a man who still expected the world to bow to him.

His eyes opened suddenly and then before I could even speak, his hand shot out and held my wrist hard and I gasped.

“Who sent you?” he asked and I stared at him in disbelief.

“What?”

His fingers tightened.

“Who sent you?”

“You are bleeding and this is what you are asking me?”

His jaw hardened, even half-conscious, he still looked arrogant, infuriating and impossible and yet, I did not pull away.

I should have walked away. Maybe my life would be better if I had. But I didn't. I stayed.

I got him out of the car and held him up when his legs nearly gave out. I pressed my hand on his wound to stop the blood. His hold on me got weaker. His eyes shut slow, his breaths turned hard and choppy. Then he whispered words that stuck with me forever.

"Don't leave me."

Now, I closed my eyes and leaned back on the seat.

That was my first warning sign.

A guy like Damien Blackwood can beg you to stay one second and wreck you the next.

I breathed out slow and started the car, but didn't move yet. Memories like that don't stop easy.

One week after the crash, he found me.

Of course. Guys like Damien don't ask. They take.

I'd just left the bookstore when a black car pulled up sharp in front of me. He got out. Alive, good-looking, dangerous.

Nothing like the bloody mess I dragged from the wreck.

But those eyes? Same ones.

Sharp. Piercing. Seeing right through you.

He then looked at me like he already decided I mattered, and that was my second mistake.

He walked up to me and said, “You left.”

I blinked at him. “You’re welcome?”

That made him almost smile.

Almost.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

That surprised me more than it should have.

“For me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He looked at me for a long second, then said, “To thank you.” That was a lie, I knew that now, because Damien never really came back for gratitude.

He came back because he saw use, but at the time, I was stupid enough to feel something warm in my chest.

He asked me to dinner, then another, then another, he never chased sweetly, never flirted like normal men, he just watched, studied and tested.

And somehow, that made him harder to resist.

Then one night, he asked to see me urgently.

I still remember the look on his face when I walked into that private lounge, tie loose, eyes dark, whiskey untouched.

A man carrying too much on his shoulders, and the second he saw me, he stood and walked over and then stopped too close.

Then he said the one thing I never expected.

“Marry me.”

I laughed bitterly now inside my car, because even remembering it was insane.

At the time, I actually thought I heard wrong.

“What?”

“I need a wife,” he said.

Not I want you, not I care about you, not I was falling for you, just that. I need a wife.

I should have walked away right there.

But then he looked at me and said, “I trust you.”

And somehow, that was worse.

Because Damien Blackwood was not a man who trusted easily.

So I believed it meant something.

I let my heart be foolish.

I let hope grow where it should never have been planted.

Then I made the biggest mistake of all.

I told my father.

The second he heard Damien’s name, his face changed.

Not shock, not approval but pure warning.

He looked me dead in the eyes and said,

“That man will never know your worth until it is too late.”

I argued with him, defended Damien, told myself my father was wrong, told myself Damien was just misunderstood.

Told myself love would make everything better.

God, I was stupid.

I then gripped the steering wheel tighter and blinked away the stung in my eyes, because my father was right.

He was right from the very beginning.

And still…

I chose Damien, that was my mistake, that was my beginning and the cruelest part?

Damien never even knew who I really was, never knew my family was not ordinary.

Never knew I was not some random woman he could pick up, marry, and throw away when he got tired.

He only knew the version of me I allowed him to see.

And he still did not value her, my jaw tightened and I finally shifted the car into drive.

Rain kept falling as I pulled away from the house that was no longer mine and my chest still hurts.

But under the pain, something else was starting to rise, something harder, something sharper.

Because if Damien wanted to act like I was nothing…then maybe it was time he learnt exactly who he let go.