RUTHLESS HEARTS COLLIDE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 41 - チャプター 47

The shift was not announced. It was felt. Arielle noticed it first in the smallest places, Damian’s hand finding hers without hesitation when they stepped out of the car, his palm warm and solid against her fingers. No a calculated gesture, No a performance, Just instinct. The cameras caught it immediately. By the time they reached the steps of the museum hosting the charity gala, flashes were already exploding around them. Voices called Damian’s name, overlapping, insistent. He didn’t slow and he didn’t release her hand, If anything, his grip tightened slightly, a quiet reassurance that settled deep in her chest. “You okay?” he asked under his breath. She nodded. “Are you?” His mouth curved faintly. “I’ve seen worse.” The night air buzzed with money and influence and carefully curated elegance. Arielle felt it press against her skin, the unspoken judgment, the curiosity sharpened into scrutiny. These people knew how to smile while dissecting you alive. Damian guided her insi

The hospital room was quiet in the way only places of recovery ever were, too white and too still, humming faintly with machines that pretended everything was under control. Arielle sat beside Liam’s bed, fingers wrapped tightly around his uninjured hand like letting go might make him disappear. His face was mottled with bruises now, swelling blooming purple and yellow beneath the harsh light. A bandage crossed his temple, another wrapped his ribs. He was conscious and alert, even joking earlier, but that didn’t erase the image Damian showed her, it was burned into her mind, blood on concrete. Damian stood near the window, one hand in his pocket, the other resting flat against the glass. He hadn’t moved much since they arrived. Security had quietly filled the corridor outside within minutes of their arrival. Doctors had been thorough, cautious, respectful in that way people were when Damian Blackwood was present. Liam would recover, No internal damage, Pain, yes. Trauma, yes. But

Doubt did not arrive loudly. It slipped in quietly, like a draft through a window she hadn’t realized was open. Arielle stood in front of the bathroom mirror long after the water in the sink had gone cold, staring at her own reflection without really seeing it. Valerie’s voice echoed in her head with infuriating clarity, every word polished and precise, designed to lodge itself where reassurance could not easily reach. You were a broken thing on the worst day of your life. Arielle pressed her palms against the marble counter, grounding herself. She had survived worse than cruel words wrapped in silk. She had rebuilt herself before Damian ever entered her life. She knew that. And yet. She replayed moments now with a new lens, Damian stepping in at exactly the right time, resources appearing before she ever had to ask, her life stabilizing almost too quickly. Safety layered upon safety until she barely remembered what it felt like to breathe without it. Had she mistaken protectio

The silence that followed Arielle’s question was not empty.it was crowded, suffocating, a living thing that pressed in from all sides, thick with things Damian did not say, with years he had sealed away behind discipline and success and precision, locked behind iron gates of control. It vibrated with the weight of unspoken words, with shadows he had banished to the corners of his mind, with the ghosts of vulnerabilities he refused to acknowledge. He stood across from her in the low-lit living room, the city glowing faintly through the glass walls behind him, a distant hum of neon and steel, his face carefully neutral in a way she was beginning to recognize too well, a mask he donned like a second skin. This was the face he wore in boardrooms, the one that brokered deals and crushed opposition and kept the wolves at bay. This was the face he wore when emotions weren't his favorite forth, when feelings were inconvenient, when the only currency that mattered was power. “The Locke de