Princess Inkspire
"I said no."
The words came out like I'd been practicing them for years.
Damien's face darkened behind the mahogany desk. He rose and walked toward the couch where I sat, tall and imposing as always. I shifted away.
"Why are you moving away?"
I said nothing.
"Elena."
"What?" Tears stung my eyes. "You told me never to show my face to you, and now you want me back after every humiliation? You denied your own children and nearly got them killed. Now you want me and the 'bastards' back in your house. Never."
His face darkened further. Then he ran a hand through his hair, exhausted, and caught my hands.
"Let go of me!"
"Shh... Be calm. I'm sorry. Please."
I stared at him. Did he just apologize?
Elena's parents died when she was sixteen. Her gambler father, James Hayes, owed Damien's father, Romano Blackwood, ten million dollars. When James kept making excuses, Romano came to collect in person, and the same day James's other enemies burned the building down. Elena came home to ashes. Damien's men took her to the Blackwood estate, where he humiliated her daily until he left abroad for a business award.
He returned on her eighteenth birthday with no gift, only a plan to break her further by blaming her family for his father's death. At his party, an admirer drugged him, and he had Elena brought to him. A month later she told him she was pregnant. He called her a slut and refused a child with his "debt payment." Learning he was her first, he began wanting her close.
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