Chapter 3: The Other Side of His Life
1030 Words
The Holt estate didn't welcome you. It assessed you.
Three storeys of dark stone rising behind iron gates that stood twelve feet tall and opened for no one who wasn't expected. The grounds were immaculate in the way that required staff and money and the kind of attention that never slept. A fountain sat at the centre of the circular driveway, water moving quietly in the dark, lit from beneath in pale blue light that made everything look cold even in summer.
Damian pulled through the gates at half past ten.
He sat in the car for a moment after the engine died. Just sat there in the silence with his hands still on the wheel, looking at the entrance of his own home the way a man looks at something he has outgrown but cannot leave.
Then he got out.
The entrance hall was all marble and high ceilings and the particular quiet that came from a house where people had stopped talking to each other and started performing instead. A housekeeper appeared from somewhere and disappeared just as quickly. Damian loosened his tie and moved toward the staircase.
"You're late."
Eliora stood at the top of the stairs.
Silk robe. Hair pinned. Ice blue eyes that had been sharpened over seventeen years of marriage into something that could cut without touching. She looked down at him with the expression he knew better than any other. The one that was already angry but wanted him to ask why.
He didn't ask.
"Late meeting," he said.
"You always have late meetings."
He moved toward the kitchen. She descended the stairs behind him, unhurried, the way she did everything that was meant to remind him she couldn't be ignored.
"Neil failed his mathematics exam," she said to his back.
"I'll talk to him."
"You said that last month."
"And I'm saying it again."
***
The kitchen was cold and clean and nothing had been kept warm for him. He opened the refrigerator and stared into it without seeing much. Leftover food from a dinner eaten hours ago without him. He wasn't particularly hungry anyway.
"Rowan called," Eliora said from the doorway. "He wants to move the Vienna meeting."
"I'll call him."
"I already told him you would." A pause loaded with everything she didn't say directly. "Someone has to."
Damian closed the refrigerator. Turned to look at her.
She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and her chin lifted and her eyes doing that thing they did where they searched his face for a crack she could press into. He had loved her once. He could still remember what that had felt like if he tried hard enough. Warm and uncomplicated and full of a kind of hope he hadn't known yet was temporary.
That felt like someone else's life now.
"Is there anything else?" he asked.
Something moved across her face. Quick and almost human before it disappeared back behind the polish.
"Lily asked for you at dinner," she said. "She waited until eight."
That landed. He let it.
"I'll see her in the morning," he said quietly.
Eliora held his gaze for one more moment then turned and walked back toward the stairs without another word. Her footsteps were precise and unhurried on the marble. The sound of someone who had learned to leave rooms in a way that made people feel the leaving.
Damian stood alone in the kitchen.
The house settled around him, all its expensive silence pressing in from every direction. He reached into his jacket pocket and turned his phone over in his hand. Looked at it for a moment.
Then he set it face down on the counter and didn't pick it up again.
He thought about grey eyes catching headlights. About hands pressed flat against the hood of his car. About a girl who kept saying she was fine in a voice that had clearly forgotten what fine actually felt like.
In case the road is dark again.
He didn't know why he had given her the card. He gave nobody that number. It was direct, personal, the kind of access he extended to maybe four people in the world and all of them had earned it over years.
She had earned nothing. She was a stranger on a dark road.
He stood there in his cold kitchen in his silent house and couldn't come up with a single reason that explained it.
That bothered him more than it should have.
***
Across the city in a room that smelled of damp wood and old curtains Aria lay on her narrow bed staring at the ceiling with a plain white card balanced on her chest.
Just a number. No name. No explanation.
She had looked it up. Or tried to. Nothing came back. Whoever he was he was the kind of person whose number didn't exist on the internet and that alone told her more than any search result could have.
She should throw it away.
She pressed it flat against her sternum instead and closed her eyes.
Her uncle had been asleep when she got home. No note, no food left out, no sign that anyone had noticed she had been gone since morning. The kitchen had been empty and dark and she had made herself toast and eaten it standing over the sink because sitting down felt like admitting how tired she actually was.
This was her life.
This quiet, unwitnessed, unremarkable life where nothing ever went right and no one ever waited up and the most notable thing that had happened to her in twenty years was nearly getting hit by a car on a dark road and climbing into it anyway.
She opened her eyes.
Looked at the ceiling.
Thought about a voice that didn't need to raise itself to be heard and a hand resting on a console between them and green eyes that looked at her like she was something worth looking at.
You haven't eaten. I can tell.
She pressed the card a little harder against her chest.
"Stupid," she said quietly to no one.
She didn't throw it away.
End of Chapter 3
- Writer
