Damian’s POV
He hadn’t slept.
Not in the way normal people did—drifting into dreams, waking with clarity. No, for him, sleep was a negotiation. A cautious dance with silence, where he closed his eyes and hoped the memories wouldn’t bleed through.
Tonight, silence had betrayed him again.
Damian stood in the hallway outside the west wing—the place she had wandered into earlier. She thought he hadn’t noticed, but he always noticed. The west wing was a place he kept sealed like a tomb, and Bella, with her curious heart and defiant eyes, had walked straight into it.
He should’ve stopped her.
But he didn’t.
Because some part of him—some reckless, forgotten fragment—wanted to see what she would stir up.
And stir she did.
He pushed the door open. The room greeted him with stale air and the faintest hint of her perfume—roses, rain, and something sun-warmed and soft. She had moved the bench, sat there, touched the keys. That small shift in the room’s energy was louder than a scream in his ears.
The piano looked the same as always: dust-covered, silent, untouched for years. Yet somehow, it felt different now. As though her presence had awakened something within it.
Within him.
Damian sat down slowly, running a hand across the lid. Dust coated his fingers, dry and thick, but underneath it—the piano still lived. The keys were old, stiff, but they remembered.
And so did he.
He pressed a key. D-minor. A hollow note echoed, haunting and imperfect. That key used to be her favorite. Not Bella’s—
Rose’s.
---
The memory flooded him uninvited.
A thunderstorm. Candlelight. Music floating in the air.
Rose had always played barefoot. Said she could feel the sadness of the house through the floorboards.
“Play with me, Dami,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder.
He remembered the exact weight of her. The scent of lavender in her hair. The way her fingers danced across the keys like she wasn’t afraid of anything.
Back then, he wasn’t afraid either.
He had been human.
He had been hopeful.
But hope had teeth.
---
He stood abruptly, the bench scraping loudly across the floor.
Bella had looked at Rose’s portrait earlier. She’d paused, lingered too long, asked nothing but thought everything.
She would ask about her eventually. About the red-haired woman with the mischievous eyes.
He couldn’t tell her the truth.
That Rose had been his fiancée.
That she died in that very room.
That the man who killed her was buried deep in the woods behind the estate—and he had put him there.
No.
Bella didn’t need that story. She didn’t need to know how ugly love could turn. How something sweet could curdle into blood and violence and silence.
But if she kept pushing, kept peeling back layers—she’d find it all anyway.
And then?
She would leave.
Just like the rest.
---
Back in his study, Damian poured himself a drink. The whiskey burned, but not enough. Nothing burned quite like memory.
He stood by the window, looking down at the empty garden. Moonlight spilled over the hedges, turning everything silver and still.
She was asleep, probably. Or maybe still wide awake, writing poems in her head or staring at the ceiling, wondering who the hell he really was.
He wished she wouldn't ask.
He hoped she never stopped.
Because in her defiance, in her innocence, in her dangerously honest eyes—he saw the only thing he couldn’t afford to feel again.
Possibility.
---
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