Chapter 10
661 Words
Elena pov:
She didn’t mean to leave her room.
Her hand was just… already on the doorknob. The hallway beyond was quiet, dimly lit. No guards. No shadows moving. Just stillness.
For once, the silence didn’t feel like a threat.
She stepped out barefoot, not really sure why. Maybe it was the ache in her chest. Or the way the room had started to feel too full, too full of thoughts, of things she didn’t want to feel. Maybe she just needed space to breathe.
The air in the hallway smelled faintly like books and cologne. His cologne. She hated that she could tell. Hated even more that it didn’t repulse her anymore.
She found herself walking, slowly. Not like someone escaping. More like someone drifting.
And before she knew it, she was standing outside his study. The door was cracked open, just a little. She could hear movement inside—papers shifting, the soft clink of a glass.
Her pulse picked up.
She should go back. She should.
But she didn’t.
“You’re awake.”
His voice came from inside, calm and low, like he’d known she was there the whole time.
She hesitated. Then pushed the door open a little more.
Damiano sat behind a desk, shirt sleeves rolled up, a glass in his hand, his tie undone. He didn’t look dangerous right then. He looked… tired.
And human.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said softly.
He nodded toward the chair across from him. “You can sit, if you want.”
She didn’t want to want to. But she did.
The chair creaked quietly as she sat, wrapping her arms around herself like armor.
“This room doesn’t feel like the rest of the house,” she murmured, not really thinking about it until after the words left her mouth.
He looked up. Met her eyes for a second too long.
“It was my mother’s,” he said. “She picked everything in here. Even the curtains.”
Elena glanced around. Shelves full of books, a worn armchair in the corner, soft golden light from a lamp on the desk. It didn’t match him at all.
“She liked books?”
“She said stories were safer than people.”
There was something fragile in the way he said it. Like a memory pressed too hard against.
“You don’t seem like someone who’s ever needed safe places,” she said.
Damiano exhaled through his nose. Almost a laugh, but not quite.
“That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” he said. “Look untouchable so no one bothers to check if you’re bleeding.”
She didn’t know why that made her chest ache. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t feel anything.
But the longer she sat there, the more her brain started to betray her.
The more he stopped looking like a monster and started looking like a man she didn’t understand.
She shifted in her seat. “Why did you really take me?”
Damiano’s eyes lifted. Slowly. Like the question physically weighed something.
“I thought you were a threat,” he said. “And then… I didn’t know how to undo it without making things worse.”
“So you just kept me,” she said, voice sharp around the edges.
“I’m not proud of that.”
Elena looked at him for a long second.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t justify it. Just sat there, letting the guilt sit in the space between them.
She stood, suddenly needing to move. To breathe.
“I should go.”
“Elena—”
But she was already at the door.
She paused there, hand on the frame, heart pounding for reasons she didn’t want to name.
“Whatever this is,” she said without looking back, “it doesn’t fix what you did.”
“I know.”
His voice was quiet. But it followed her like a shadow long after she left the room......
- Writer
