𝙃𝙞𝙨 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙗𝙞𝙙𝙙𝙚𝙣 𝙊𝙗𝙨𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣

𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙚: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙊𝙖𝙩𝙝 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙣𝙚

(Damian’s POV)

Love is the sharpest weapon.

Damian learned that early. Younger than he should’ve.

He remembered the sound of his mother’s cry—raw, broken, echoing off the marble walls the night his father was murdered. The Moretti estate was painted in blood that night, but it wasn’t the gunshot that haunted him.

It was her scream.

The way she collapsed beside the body, her arms wrapped around a man who had chosen loyalty to a woman over loyalty to the family. That was his father’s final mistake.

And the last one Damian swore he’d ever make.

Love was a weakness. An infection.

It made men hesitate. It made them break rules.

It got them killed.

So he had built himself from iron and control.

He never kissed the same woman twice. Never stayed long enough for names, stories, birthdays. They existed in passing. Like shadows.

Until her.

Until Celeste.

He stood in the balcony of his private suite now, shirtless, a glass of scotch in his hand as the evening wind pulled at his hair.

She was in the guest wing.

Sleeping.

Maybe dreaming of escape.

Maybe dreaming of him.

His jaw clenched.

He should’ve left her with his men when they first brought her in. She was just collateral. Just a piece of leverage to silence her father. But from the moment she looked at him with those wide, defiant eyes… he’d felt it.

That crack in his discipline.

That ache in his chest.

She stirred something he had spent years burying. Something he didn’t want to feel.

Earlier, when she had begged for him—hot, breathless, unzipped in the backseat of his car—he nearly gave in. Nearly let go.

And it wasn’t lust that stopped him.

It was the look in her eyes.

Drugged. Lost. Trusting.

It scared the hell out of him.

Because if she looked at him like that sober…

He wasn’t sure he could resist.

A knock pulled him from the memory. Luca entered, quiet as always, placing a folder on the table.

“The spy was confirmed. Working for Vittorio.”

Damian didn’t respond.

Luca hesitated. “He knows you killed that man… for her.”

The words hung in the air.

“For her.”

Damian picked up the folder and tossed it into the fire beside him.

“I killed him because he touched what wasn’t his,” he said, voice cold. “That’s not love. That’s principle.”

But even he didn’t believe it.

Luca gave a nod and turned to leave, but paused at the door.

“She’s not like the others,” he said quietly. “You look at her differently.”

Damian didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Only sipped his scotch as the flames crackled behind him.

When the door closed, he muttered under his breath, “She’s going to be the death of me.

Damian stood alone long after the fire consumed the folder.

The orange glow danced along his skin, but he felt no warmth. Only pressure—like something pressing down on his ribs, tightening every time he thought of her.

Celeste.

She wasn’t meant to matter.

She wasn’t meant to be anything.

And yet every time he looked at her, it chipped away at the armor he’d worn for years—armor built from blood, betrayal, and bone-deep lessons no child should ever have learned.

He remembered his father’s body—slumped in a pool of crimson on the library floor.

His mother’s sobs.

Vittorio’s cold stare.

"You made him weak," his uncle had said to his mother. "You made him soft. And soft men don’t survive in this world."

Those words had shaped him.

No distractions. No mercy. No love.

He lived by it.

He ruled by it.

And yet…

Her voice.

Her flushed cheeks in that car. The way her dress slipped down her spine. The way she clung to him like he was something safe.

Him. Safe. What a joke.

He should have taken her.

Broken her.

Used her, and tossed her back into the gilded cage where she belonged.

But he didn’t. Because the moment she whispered his name—not in fear, not in pain, but in trust—he felt something unacceptable rise in him.

Protectiveness.

That was dangerous.

That was the beginning of weakness.