The Blackwood manor was a masterpiece of Victorian opulence, but tonight, it felt like a sarcophagus. Damien stood in the grand hallway, the air around him thick with the scent of unspent rage.
He had just returned from the Academy, the image of Serena standing there, pale and frantic, burned into his retinas like a cauterized wound.
He didn't go to the master suite. He went to the study—the room where he had spent five years pretending that the silence was peace.
He didn't turn on the lights. He sat in the dark, the embers of the hearth casting long, distorted shadows across the mahogany desk. He wasn't thinking about business. He wasn't thinking about the timber rights or the Phoenix Collective’s hostile takeover.
He was thinking about Leo.
Specifically, he was thinking about the w
