Three
1320 Words
DAMIAN'S POV
People like to imagine billionaires spend their mornings in silk robes, sipping champagne while assistants line up to kiss their asses.
I know better.
My mornings start with coffee so black it could strip paint, emails stacked higher than most people’s annual salaries, and meetings that begin before the sun drags itself over the skyline. And honestly? I prefer it that way.
Routine. Precision. Control.
The world can’t f**k you if you never hand it the chance.
I was scanning through a merger proposal when my phone started buzzing across the glass surface of my desk. Adrian. Of course.
I should’ve let it ring. But I never do. Against my better judgment, I answered.
“Blackwood,” I said.
“Jesus Christ,” he groaned, “you ever answer like a normal person? It’s eight in the morning, not Judgment Day.”
“For me, it’s always Judgment Day,” I muttered, flipping to the next page.
He laughed, loud enough to make me want to hang up. “That explains a lot. No wonder everyone’s terrified of you. You sound like a Bond villain on caffeine.”
“They should be terrified,” I said flatly. “Fear keeps people sharp.”
“Fear makes people think you’re constipated,” he shot back. “Seriously, do you even remember the last time you got laid?”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer.
“Exactly,” Adrian said triumphantly. “You can’t remember. It’s been, what, years? You’re basically a monk now. My best friend, the virgin saint of Wall Street.”
“Keep talking, and I’ll make sure your next contract renewal disappears,” I warned, but there was a trace of humor in my voice.
Adrian chuckled. “Empty threats. You’d be bored without me.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong.
But he was wrong about one thing: I wasn’t a monk. I was just done. Done with false smiles, with whispered lies in silk sheets, with women who wanted the Blackwood name more than the man.
Once was enough.
The memory was still sharp, even though years had passed. Her smile, sweet as poison. The way she’d looked at me like I was her everything, right up until the moment I found out I was nothing more than her ticket. The tabloids had had a field day. “Billionaire Bachelor Broken by Betrayal.” My pride gutted, my trust burned to ash.
Never again.
Now? I kept it clean. Controlled. No flings, no emotions, no pointless distractions. I poured it all into work, into building something unshakable, untouchable. That way, no one could ever reach me again.
But Adrian never stopped trying.
“Anyway,” he went on, “Chloe’s been riding my ass about us all going out this weekend. Drinks, maybe dinner. She says I need more of a social life, and she insists dragging your grumpy ass along will count as ‘therapy.’”
“Not interested,” I said immediately.
“You are interested. You just don’t know it yet,” he countered smoothly. “Come on, man. You’re impossible to get out of that penthouse. When’s the last time you did anything that wasn’t work?”
“Work is all I need.”
“Work is why you look forty when you’re barely thirty-two,” he teased. “Seriously, Damian, you need to blow off some steam before you spontaneously combust. You’ve got that vein popping in your forehead again, don’t you?”
I glanced at my reflection in the black screen of my laptop. Damn vein was there.
Adrian laughed like he knew.
“Look,” he continued, softening a little, “it doesn’t have to be some wild night. Just come have a drink. You and Chloe get along—”
“She tolerates me.”
“She tolerates you because she likes me,” Adrian corrected. “And because deep down, she knows you’re not really as heartless as you act.”
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the city skyline through my floor-to-ceiling windows. Heartless? Maybe. Or maybe just smart.
“Text me the details,” I said finally, more to end the conversation than agree.
“Ha!” Adrian crowed. “Victory. You heard it here first—the ice king himself is coming out for a drink. Chloe’s going to lose her mind.”
“I already regret this.”
“You’ll thank me,” he promised. “Or at least you’ll drink enough whiskey to forget you hate me.”
Before I could reply, he hung up. Typical.
I set the phone down, staring at the neat pile of papers waiting for me. But for a moment, I didn’t see contracts or numbers. I saw her face again—the one woman who’d managed to burn me so completely.
Adrian thought I needed a drink.
What I really needed was to remember why I’d built these walls so damn high.
I closed my laptop, but the numbers and neat contracts didn’t disappear. They blurred, twisting into something I hadn’t allowed myself to think about in years.
Her.
It started the way all mistakes do—sweetly.
I’d been twenty-seven, arrogant enough to believe I could have it all. Billionaire by twenty-five, magazine covers, the kind of man people whispered about when he walked into a room. I was young, rich, and stupid enough to think love would be the one thing I couldn’t buy or break.
She’d seemed different. God, I laugh at that now. Different because she didn’t swoon when she met me. Different because she pretended she didn’t care about the Blackwood name. Different because she knew exactly how to smile at me like I was a man, not a headline.
Her laugh had been soft, genuine—or so I thought. She asked me about my favorite books instead of my bank accounts, kissed me like she meant it, let me believe I was hers.
For a while, I was.
I remember the dinners, the late nights tangled in sheets, the way I let myself think about things I’d sworn I didn’t need. Marriage. A future. Stability. Me, Damian Blackwood, planning ring cuts and guest lists in the back of my mind.
What a fool.
The memory sharpens like a blade at my throat—the night I walked into that party, proud to have her on my arm. Proud to finally show the world the woman I thought was mine.
And then overhearing it.
Not from her lips, of course. No. That would’ve been too merciful. I heard it from her friend. Drunken laughter in the powder room, careless whispers.
“She’s got him wrapped around her finger.”
“Can you imagine? Blackwood money? She’ll never have to lift a finger again.”
“Smartest thing she ever did—snaring him.”
The words hit harder than any punch.
I confronted her later, jaw tight, heart pounding. She didn’t even deny it. Just stood there, face calm, and said: You didn’t really think I was with you for love, did you?.
I think that broke me more than the betrayal itself. The ease. The casual cruelty. The look in her eyes that told me I’d been nothing more than a game she won.
The tabloids found out within days. They always do. “Billionaire Duped by Gold-Digger.” Photos of her leaving in my car, smiling at the cameras while I drowned in humiliation.
After that, I learned.
Never give your trust. Never believe the smile. Never let anyone in close enough to cut you.
So I built walls. Steel-reinforced, cold, impenetrable. And I’ve been living behind them ever since.
Adrian calls it grumpy. Chloe calls it sad. But for me, it’s survival.
Because the truth is simple: if I never let anyone close again, no one can ever make me bleed like that again.
- Writer
