CHAPTER 4: Rules and Distance
1275 Words
The first night in Blackwood Towers didn’t feel like a beginning.
It felt like suspension.
Like Christa had stepped into a place where time didn’t quite behave the way it should, and no one had bothered to explain the rules.
She stood by the window long after Damian had left the room.
If he had left the room.
She wasn’t entirely sure.
The apartment was too quiet for certainty. Even the city below felt distant, like it belonged to another version of reality that she was no longer fully part of.
Three years.
The number kept repeating itself in her mind.
Three years of this.
Three years of whatever this was becoming.
Christa pressed her palm lightly against the glass. It was cold. Real. Unemotional.
Unlike everything else here.
Morning came without announcement.
There were no soft transitions, no gradual shift from night to day. Just light suddenly filling the room like it had been switched on somewhere beyond her control.
Christa had barely slept.
She sat on the edge of the bed, still in the same clothes from yesterday, hair slightly disheveled, thoughts heavier than her body.
A soft knock interrupted the silence.
Before she could respond, the door opened anyway.
Damian stepped in.
Not rushed. Not hesitant.
Like boundaries were not something he needed permission to cross—only conditions to be noted.
“You’re awake,” he said.
Christa looked at him briefly. “Unfortunately.”
That earned no reaction.
He placed a small document folder on the table near the window.
“I’ve outlined the terms,” he said.
Christa blinked slowly. “You outlined them?”
“Yes.”
Of course, he did.
She stood up, crossing the room slowly. “Do I get a say in these terms?”
“You already agreed,” he replied.
“I said I was staying,” she corrected. “Not that I signed my life away.”
That made him pause for half a second.
Barely noticeable.
But it was there.
Damian turned slightly toward the folder. “Read it.”
Christa exhaled through her nose, then opened it.
Page after page.
Clean formatting. Structured clauses. No emotional language. No ambiguity.
Just rules.
Clause One: Public Representation
They would appear as a married couple in all public settings.
Clause Two: Private Separation
Separate personal lives unless otherwise required.
Clause Three: Emotional Non-Interference
No obligation to emotional attachment. No expectations of intimacy.
Clause Four: Confidentiality
No disclosure of internal arrangements to third parties.
Christa stopped reading for a moment.
Her throat tightened slightly, though she didn’t fully understand why.
It wasn’t that the contract was harsh.
It was that it was empty.
Like even the idea of humanity had been intentionally removed from it.
She flipped another page.
Her voice came out quieter. “This is… very efficient.”
“It needs to be,” Damian replied.
Christa looked up at him. “You talk about this like we’re signing a business merger.”
“That’s closer to the truth than anything else,” he said.
Something in her expression tightened.
“And what am I in this merger?” she asked.
A pause.
Not long.
But deliberate.
“Necessary structure,” he said.
That landed differently than she expected.
Not painful exactly.
But… reducing.
Christa closed the folder slowly.
“Do you hear yourself when you talk?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And you don’t think this is… wrong?”
“I think it’s functional,” he replied.
She stared at him for a long moment.
Then shook her head slightly. “You really don’t know how to speak like a human being, do you?”
That time, something shifted.
Not anger.
Not irritation.
Just a faint change in his gaze.
Like she had stepped slightly off a path he expected her to stay on.
“You’ll adjust,” he said.
Christa let out a short, humorless breath. “That’s not how people work.”
“You’re not most people in this situation,” Damian replied.
That silence between them stretched again.
But this one felt different.
Less controlled.
More uncertain.
Christa’s phone buzzed suddenly.
She glanced at it quickly.
Sophia.
Her chest tightened slightly before she answered.
“Where are you?” Sophia’s voice came immediately.
Christa stepped slightly away from Damian without thinking. “I’m… somewhere.”
A pause.
“That’s not an answer,” Sophia said sharply. “You didn’t come home last night.”
“I didn’t have anywhere to go home to,” Christa replied quietly.
Silence.
Then Sophia’s tone changed. “Christa… tell me you didn’t go through with it.”
Christa closed her eyes briefly.
Damian stood a few steps away, not reacting, but clearly aware she was speaking to someone else.
“I’m here,” Christa said finally.
Another silence.
Longer this time.
“You’re Where?” Sophia asked.
Christa hesitated.
Then “I’m in it.”
That was enough.
Sophia exhaled sharply on the other end. “You don’t even know what ‘it’ is yet.”
Christa looked briefly at Damian.
“I think I do,” she said quietly.
“That man is not safe,” Sophia said firmly. “You don’t build survival around someone like him.”
Christa’s grip tightened on the phone.
“I don’t have another option right now.”
“That’s not true,” Sophia replied immediately.
But Christa didn’t answer that.
Because they both knew it was complicated.
Finally, Sophia’s voice softened slightly but only slightly.
“I’m coming to see you,” she said.
Christa blinked. “No Sophia, don’t,"
“I’m coming,” she repeated. “I need to see what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Then the call ended.
Christa lowered the phone slowly.
Damian was still standing where she left him.
Watching her.
Not intrusively.
Just observant.
“You have someone who opposes this,” he said.
“Yes,” Christa replied.
“That will create instability.”
She gave him a dry look. “So will everything about you.”
That should have ended the conversation.
But it didn’t.
Instead, Damian walked slightly closer.
Not enough to intimidate.
Just enough to exist more clearly in her space.
“There are rules,” he said again.
Christa sighed. “I’ve seen them.”
“I mean behavioral rules,” he clarified.
That made her look up at him.
“Like what?”
His gaze held steady.
“No unnecessary emotional attachment,” he said. “No interference in my work. No external influence affecting decisions inside this arrangement.”
Christa raised a brow slightly. “And what happens if I break a rule?”
A pause.
Then
“You won’t,” he said.
That certainty again.
It should have annoyed her.
Instead, it unsettled her.
Because he wasn’t guessing.
He was predicting.
Christa folded her arms slightly. “You’re very confident for someone who just dragged a stranger into his life.”
“You came willingly,” he corrected.
She narrowed her eyes slightly. “That’s not how I remember it.”
A faint pause.
Then Damian said, almost calmly
“You will adapt.”
Something about the way he said it made it feel less like an expectation.
And more like a conclusion already reached.
Christa looked away first.
Not because she agreed.
But because staying in his gaze too long felt like stepping into something she didn’t yet understand.
And didn’t fully trust herself to navigate.
Outside the glass walls, the city kept moving.
Unaware.
Unbothered.
But inside Blackwood Towers, something had already started shifting.
Quietly.
Irreversibly.
And neither Christa nor Damian had fully named it yet.
- Writer
