THE BILLIONAIRE'S THERAPIST

Chapter Two: The Reflection

Damien’s POV

I saw her before she even walked in.

Not with my eyes, something deeper. That gut feeling that quietly alerts you when old troubles or memories are about to return. I didn’t need to turn around. I could feel her presence sliding through the air like static, it was as if electricity ran through it, making the silence feel thick and alive with her presence.

For days, I’d been sitting here, facing the glass, trying to remember what happened during those seventy-two missing hours. The clinic called it a "neurological episode". Some fancy term to dress up the fact that my brain had betrayed me. They said I’d collapsed after a week-long work marathon—stress, exhaustion, the usual list of polite corporate excuses.

But I know my mind better than they do.

I built companies off its precision. And yet now, it skips like a damaged hard drive, whole fragments of time wiped clean; memories vanish, moments vanish, replaced by a confusing empty blur.

And then there’s her.

Selene Ward.

The name feels like a scar when I say it, faint but permanent.

They told me she was new, that she was brought in after the incident, that she’d never met me before, never spoken to me, and that she didn’t know anything beyond the medical reports in her file.

They’re lying.

Because the moment I heard her voice, it sounded soft and deliberate, every syllable placed like a chess piece—I knew.

I’ve heard that voice before. Maybe in a dream. Maybe in the dark.

Or maybe during those lost seventy-two hours.

And her eyes… that was the proof I didn’t ask for.

You can put on a smile, even when you don’t feel like it. You can adjust your voice, your stance, make yourself seem interested or caring. You can pretend all of that.

But there’s one thing you can’t fake — recognition.

That quick, automatic moment when your memory suddenly matches what’s in front of you.

It cuts through your denial like glass on skin — sharp, sudden, and impossible to ignore.

When she walked in, she tried to act calm, but I saw through it, the slight shake in her hands, the stiffness in her shoulders. The kind of reaction people have when they walk into a crime scene they helped create.

That wasn’t professionalism. That was guilt or fear.

She started her questions, trying to sound clinical.

Describe the blackout. Any recurring images?

Any sensory distortions?

She kept her eyes on the notes, but her voice betrayed her. A slight quiver when she said my name. The faintest hesitation before she mentioned the incident.

I gave her what she expected—a smile that wasn’t really a smile. It was a controlled and measured smile. The kind I use in boardrooms when I want people to underestimate me.

A few half-answers, a joke disguised as confession. Enough to make her think she was getting through. Enough to keep her guessing.

Let her wonder.

Let her fear I remember more than I do.

Because truth is, I don’t know where my memories end, and I don't know where her lies begin.

And worse—I’m not sure if I want to.

It started with a photograph.

A single, corrupted frame extracted from surveillance footage. The clinic told me the footage was incomplete, but I didn’t buy it. While digging through their archives, I found a single frame — marked as corrupted, locked away like it was never meant to be found. That alone made me suspicious. So I cracked it open myself.

What I saw didn’t make sense.

A villa I don’t recognize. Expensive—modern architecture, glass walls, red-leather interiors. I was there, sitting in a chair like some broken doll. Eyes open, but empty.

And beside me… her.

Selene.

Her hand rested lightly on my shoulder, her head tilted like she was about to whisper something only I could hear.

But it wasn’t just a gesture—it was the way she looked at me, that strange mix of pity and ownership.

The kind of look you give someone when you know they might vanish from your life forever.

The timestamp was during the blackout. The seventy-two hours I wasn’t supposed to remember.

The clinic said it was an error. That maybe I’d hallucinated it while decoding. But I know the difference between corruption and cover-up. Someone tampered with the data. Someone wanted that moment erased.

And now she’s here.

In the flesh. Sitting across from me, pretending to be detached, professional. Asking questions with that calm, polished voice as if we’re strangers.

Maybe she thinks I won’t push. That I’m still weak. Still fogged by medication.

She’s wrong.

I didn’t build an empire by trusting the surface. People lie. Memories distort. But data—that doesn’t lie.

I’ll find the rest of the footage. Every missing fragment. Every frame they tried to delete. I’ll rebuild those seventy-two hours byte by byte, until the truth stands naked again.

Because something happened between us.

And I can feel it—not just in memory, but in the way my pulse shifts when she walks into the room. In the way silence stretches between us like a held breath.

There’s history there. Dangerous, electric, and buried under layers of denial.

She leans forward to jot something down, and I catch a faint trace of her perfume—lavender and smoke. It’s delicate, almost harmless, but it hits me like a memory I can’t place. My chest tightens, and for a heartbeat, the room seems to shift, as if reality itself is trembling.

A flash—

Her hand grazes my face.

She whispers something I can’t quite catch.

My heart races.

And then, a glass shatters.

Then it’s gone.

I blink, and she’s back in front of me, mask in place, voice steady. “Are you alright, Mr. Voss?”

Mr. Voss. She says it like armor. As if putting distance between us will make her safe.

I nod. But inside, something burns.

She remembers. I can see it in her. Every time our eyes meet, she looks away too quickly. She’s hiding something big—something the clinic doesn’t want me to uncover.

Maybe she was part of the experiment. Maybe she was assigned to observe me. Maybe… she was the trigger.

Whatever it is, she knows what happened during those missing hours.

And I’ll get it out of her.

Even if it means shattering the version of myself she’s spent so long shaping, I’ll do it.

Because this isn’t just about memory anymore. It’s about control.

And if she played me once, she won’t get the chance again.

Still, a reckless, human part of me—one I despise—can’t help wondering if she reached something real in me during those lost hours. If the tension I feel when she’s close isn’t just fear… but something darker, desire warped into a shape I can barely recognize.

I can’t decide what’s worse—that she hurt me.

Or that I let her.

Tomorrow, she’ll come back. Pretending again. Asking more questions. But I’ll be ready this time. I’ll study her tone, her eyes, her breathing. I’ll match her lies with silence.

And when she slips—because everyone slips—I’ll be ready to see it.

The truth hiding behind that calm, perfect face.

The truth about what she did to me.

And maybe then, I’ll finally know whether I wanted her because of who she was…

or because she made me.