Damian's POV
I didn't believe in fate.
I used to say that a lot. To Arabella. To myself. To anyone who'd listen. I believed in strategy. In leverage. In the cold mathematics of cause and effect. I built an empire on those principles—every outcome predicted, every variable controlled, every risk calculated before it was taken.
Standing at the edge of the cliff path in Cornwall, waiting for my bride, I understood how wrong I'd been.
Because there was no mathematical formula that could have brought me here. No strategic plan that could have predicted a toy boat bumping against my shoe in a park, or a ghost returning from the dead in crimson silk, or a woman who'd spent four years planning my destruction choosing instead to stand beside me.
There was only grace. Undeserved. Unearned. And
