All Chapters of Beneath His Empire ( In Bed With My Father's Killer): Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

**Chapter 12: Aurora's POV**The penthouse was dark when I got back, except for the low gold light spilling out from under the study door.Of course he was still up, perhaps he had a lot on his mind too, just like I did.I stood outside that door for longer than I want to admit, rehearsing the question in my head like it was anything else I could get right, like there was a version of *what am I to you* that wouldn't blow everything apart the second I said it out loud.There wasn't, I knew that. I walked in anyway.Damian looked up from his desk, and whatever he saw on my face made him set his pen down slowly, carefully, the way you'd put down something breakable."You went to see him."He was always direct with his words,he told me things about myself like he already knew the answer and was just waiting to see if I'd lie about it."How do you always know?""Because I know you." He leaned back in his chair, and for once he didn't look composed, didn't look like the man who ran a boardr

*Chapter 14: Aurora's POV*Hospitals have a smell you never really forget, all bleach and fear, with an uneasy cascade of calm hovering in the atmosphere,no one knew the others fate, as I sat in that waiting room for six hours with Damian's blood still faintly staining the creases of my knuckles no matter how many times I scrubbed at them in the bathroom sink, i felt my heart beat a thousand times.Vivian showed up somewhere around hour three, mascara smudged, looking more human than I'd ever seen her, and she sat beside me without a word and just held my hand until a doctor finally came through those double doors."He's stable," the doctor said, and I felt my whole body cave in on itself with relief, "the bullet missed the vital parts, he's lucky, he'll need weeks to recover but he's going to be fine eventually."I didn't cry until I was alone in his room that night, sitting in the chair beside his bed, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest like it was the only proof I had t

Chapter 16: Aurora's POVThe onlookers said the fire took almost two hours to fully die down, i don't remember much of the ride to the hospital, just damian's hand wrapped so tight around mine i could feel his pulse instead of my own, and the paramedics saying words like smoke inhalation and shock, cause of death. My father didn't make it to the hospital.They told me later, gently, the way people tell you things they've said too many times before, that his heart just gave out when they were in the ambulance, that there was nothing anyone could have done, that i shouldn't blame myself.i did anyway, for a while.But underneath the grief there was something i didn't expect to feel, I felt a wave of relief, because for the first time in five years i wasn't grieving a lie. My father was a grieving man, glad i'd actually gotten to say goodbye to him, another thing i was grateful for was the way he looked me in the eye and told me the truth before he died, even if the truth had taken long