The Muse He Never Saw

Episode4

*"I heard Tristan was killed by his rivals,"* one shareholder was saying, low and gleeful, to the man beside him, neither of them bothering to lower their voices enough. *"Perhaps now the board is finally considering other options for the Kingsley seat."*

Damian let the boardroom door fall shut behind him harder than necessary, enjoying, briefly, the way both men flinched like they'd been caught with their hands somewhere they shouldn't be.

"I'm not dead," he said. "You can shelve the backup plan."

The color drained out of both faces in a way that would have been satisfying on a better day. It wasn't a better day. His jaw still throbbed where he'd taken a fist meant to soften him up before whoever hired the men in that alley could finish the job properly, and the split in his lip pulled every time he spoke too fast.

"Sir — Damian — it was a misunderstanding, we—"

"I know a spy when I hear one gossiping about my funeral," Damian said, and watched the man's throat work around an apology that wouldn't save him. "Keep tabs on the people circling. Let them show their hand first. We'll deal with the rest quietly, the way we always do."

His assistant caught him before he reached his office, his tablet already up, toned carefully neutral in the way that always meant bad news dressed politely. "Your father's invited Vivian Marsh to the house tonight. He wants you home early to discuss venues."

"For what."

"The wedding, sir."

Damian's step didn't slow, but something behind his ribs went cold and flat, the way it always did whenever that particular word surfaced. "Cancel it. I have work."

"Won't that look strange, considering Miss Vivian is your fiancée?"

*Fiancée.* The word still sat wrong in his mouth six years after his father had arranged it over champagne and a business merger, like Damian was a line item instead of a son, a signature waiting to be collected. A single reckless night — a blindfold, a stranger's hands, a name he'd never gotten and had spent longer than he'd admit trying to forget — and somehow the rest of his life had been decided without him in the room.

"My father has wanted a Kingsley–Vivian union since before I could talk," Damian said. "He wouldn't be pleased if I skipped dinner. He'll survive being unhappy. He usually does."

"There's one more thing." His assistant hesitated, scrolling, the way people did when they weren't sure if the next sentence would help or hurt. "He forwarded a final candidate for the junior design position. No industry references except one — a letter from Lucian Bishop himself."

That got Damian's attention properly for the first time all morning. The bishop didn't write letters to *anyone.* The man had turned down requests from three sitting ministers and a former president's daughter.

"Name?"

"Elena Reyes."

The name meant nothing to him. He filed it away, distracted, already thinking about the bruise darkening along his jaw and a stranger's mouth against his four hours earlier — soft, startled, gone before he could even ask her name, leaving behind nothing but a phantom warmth and an itch at the back of his mind he couldn't scratch.

He had the strangest feeling. He already knew that mouth from somewhere. He just couldn't place where, and it bothered him more than a man with a company to run had any business leaving it.

He sat behind his desk long after his assistant left, turning a pen between his fingers instead of touching the stack of contracts waiting for his signature. Six years of board meetings, six years of watching his father's health decline while shareholders circled like they smelled blood in the water, six years of a fiancée he'd never asked for and a night he could never fully remember no matter how many mornings he woke up chasing it — and somehow none of it weighed as heavy as the ordinary sensation of a stranger's mouth against his that afternoon.

He didn't believe in signs. He'd stopped believing in anything that couldn't be quantified, audited, or defended in a boardroom the day his father handed him a merger contract instead of a birthday gift. But something about the last few hours refused to sit quietly where he tried to file it, and for a man who prided himself on control, that unsettled him more than the bruise darkening along his jaw.

He didn't yet know her name was already sitting in a folder on his desk, waiting for tomorrow — or that by the time he finally read it, the question that had been nagging at him all afternoon would already have an answer he wasn't ready for.