Damien left for London before sunrise the next morning.
Evelyn heard the faint sound of the front door closing and the private elevator descending, but she didn’t get out of bed to say goodbye.
There was no reason to. Their marriage was nothing more than ink on paper, and last night’s awkward dinner had made that painfully clear.
She spent the following days trying to build some semblance of normalcy in the enormous penthouse. Mornings were quiet. Lily prepared breakfast with gentle kindness, while Eleanor handled cleaning with polite efficiency. Evelyn avoided the young maid as much as possible after overhearing her gossip.
Most of her time was spent in the corner of her bedroom she had turned into a small studio. She painted feverishly — cityscapes, abstract emotions, and even a fe
