Chapter 14
897 Words
*Late Morning*
Damian's POV
Damian stood in his office. His fingers tapped a silent rhythm against his desk as Leo's voice crackled through the speakerphone.
“She won’t know,” Leo reassured him. “Everything’s been routed through a private channel. No paperwork will bear your name.”
“Good,” Damian replied curtly, though a knot tightened in his chest.
Elena hadn’t asked for help. Not directly, not even when he’d brought up the possibility of treatment upgrades.
She had remained quiet, too proud or too tired to admit she needed anyone to carry part of her burden.
But he saw the signs.
The days where her skin lost color, where her walk was slower, her smile a little thinner. The moments when she disappeared to her room early or winced when she thought no one was looking.
She was holding herself together by sheer will, and he couldn't just watch.
He ended the call and leaned back in his chair.
The decision had been made. The top oncologist from Europe would consult on her case via secure correspondence and the most advanced medication which is nearly impossible to access, had been flown in under the radar.
None of it was for show.
He wasn’t saving her because of guilt or obligation.
He just wanted her to live and he didn’t want her to feel alone while doing it.
*Afternoon*
Elena's POV
The conservatory was warm and heavy with the scent of lavender and jasmine. Elena sat curled on a plush chaise, a book open in her lap but barely read.
The words blurred together as her mind wandered.
Something had changed.
She couldn’t explain it, not clearly. But she felt it, in the way the nurses no longer looked uncertain when bringing her medication, in the way Beatrice’s tone had softened and even in the silent tension that hovered around Damian whenever he entered the room.
Something had changed and though she had a thousand questions, she kept them locked behind her lips.
She wasn’t sure she could take the answer, whatever it was.
Was he doing this because he cared?
Because of Emma?
Or because she was a dying woman under his roof and he didn’t know how to feel about that?
The soft sound of footsteps interrupted her thoughts.
Emma appeared in the doorway, holding something behind her back.
Elena straightened slightly. “Hey, sweetheart.”
Emma didn’t speak but she smiled and moved closer, then extended her hands.
It was a drawing.
Crayon on thick white paper, slightly smudged at the edges. Three stick figures stood under a crooked sun. One tall figure with black scribbles for hair. One with long curls in brown. And a smaller one with a bright blue rabbit clutched tightly in a drawn hand.
Emma had drawn them together
Her, Elena and Damian.
A quiet gasp escaped her mouth
“Is this… us?” she asked gently.
Emma nodded once, her expression hopeful and nervous all at once.
Elena pulled her close, wrapping her arms around the girl’s small shoulders. “It’s beautiful. Thank you, sweetheart.”
Emma clung to her for a moment, then pulled back and ran off down the hallway, her curls bouncing.
Elena stared at the drawing long after she left.
The child’s art felt hopeful, no doubt
Damian's POV
The house was quiet when Damian returned from his late meeting, the staff already retreated for the night. The hush of the hallways welcomed him, a rare kind of silence he didn’t often get in the city.
He moved to his office, unbuttoning the top of his shirt as he passed through the doorway. He paused only when he saw what was waiting for him on the desk.
A folded piece of paper.
Leo had placed it there earlier, a message passed down from Emma through Beatrice.
He opened it slowly.
Crayon marks, childlike and imperfect. A house. A tree. A crooked sun. Three stick figures, all connected with lines drawn from hand to hand.
Emma, Elena and Himself.
He stood there for a long moment, something rising in his chest he couldn’t quite name. This child who had forgotten how to speak had chosen to draw this.
Chose to see him as someone who belonged.
He didn’t hesitate.
He moved to the far wall of his office, the one opposite his late brother’s portrait and pinned the drawing there. Right in the center.
He stepped back and stared at it.
Not as a joke. Not as a sentiment.
He didn’t know how long Elena had. The doctors hadn’t been optimistic, even with the new course of treatment. But if there was a future, no matter how fragile, he wanted that drawing to become real.
Elena's POV
She couldn’t sleep.
The drawing sat folded on her nightstand now. Emma had made a second copy and insisted Elena keep it. She'd kissed the girl's forehead and whispered her thanks, her heart full and aching all at once.
Lying there, staring at the ceiling, she thought of Damian, of the things he never said.
The glances that lingered. The tension in his voice when she was too pale. The way his hand had hovered near hers at dinner and then withdrawn.
She didn’t know what was happening between them. If anything was happening at all.
But she knew one thing.
She didn’t feel alone anymore.
- Writer
