His Father, My Master

The business betrayal

The next morning, the house was too quiet. Lila dressed quickly, her body still aching with the memory of Damian’s control, but her mind replayed Ethan’s voice outside the door. The danger of discovery clung to her like smoke.

She was slipping into her jacket when voices carried from Damian’s study. She froze.

“…a merger this size doesn’t come twice,” Ethan was saying, his tone firm, almost desperate. “If we want Westfield Investments to finalize, they want it tied to family. Which means… I have to marry Anna.”

Lila’s stomach dropped. Anna. The name cut like glass. The woman Ethan had cheated with. The reason Lila had left him, shattered, broken, vulnerable.

Damian’s voice followed, calm and deliberate. “And you’re willing to do it?”

“It’s business,” Ethan snapped. “Love doesn’t matter. It never did.”

Lila’s breath caught. Love never mattered? After everything he had said to her back then, after all the lies and promises—he had tossed her aside for Anna, and now he was ready to chain himself to her forever for money.

Her hand pressed to her mouth, suppressing a sound.

But Damian’s tone shifted, darker, sharper, like steel sliding free of its sheath. “Be careful, son. When you treat women like pawns, when you lie and discard them, you plant seeds that don’t stay buried.”

There was silence. She imagined Ethan shifting, unsettled.

“You think Anna’s family will make you powerful?” Damian continued. “Power built on betrayal never lasts. It rots from the inside.”

Something in his voice made Lila’s skin prickle. This wasn’t just about Ethan’s business deal. Damian was speaking of her, too—of the wound Ethan had left that had driven her straight into his father’s arms.

Ethan sighed, frustrated. “You don’t understand. This is bigger than me, bigger than Anna. If I don’t do this, we lose everything.”

Damian chuckled softly, the sound low and dangerous. “No, Ethan. What you don’t understand is this: you’ve already lost more than you know.”

The words hung in the air, thick with threat.

Lila backed away silently, heart pounding. She didn’t dare stay longer. Whatever game Damian was playing with his son, it was more dangerous than she had imagined. And somehow, she was caught in the center of it.

Lila found herself pacing the guest room, every nerve tight with unease. The conversation she had overheard between Damian and Ethan looped in her mind. Marriage for money. Betrayal. Damian’s warning.

When the door creaked open, Damian stepped inside, closing it quietly behind him. He studied her with those unreadable gray eyes, as if he already knew what she had heard.

“You listened,” he said softly. Not a question, a statement.

Her lips parted. “He’s marrying her… Anna. For business.”

Damian’s expression didn’t change. He crossed the room slowly, deliberate, like a man who never needed to rush. He poured himself a glass of whiskey from the sideboard, then turned to her. “Ethan has always been greedy. Always weak. I warned him once that his hunger would consume him. Now it has.”

Lila’s fists clenched. “And you’ll just let him?”

Damian smirked, sipping the whiskey. “Let him? My dear, I’ve been guiding him into this trap for months.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

He stepped closer, his voice dropping into a dark whisper. “The Westfield deal. Anna’s family. Every step of this has been orchestrated. Ethan thinks he’s playing for power, but in truth, he’s walking willingly into a cage. A cage I built.”

Lila’s breath hitched. “Why?”

Damian’s gaze sharpened, his smirk gone, replaced with something colder. “Because betrayal must be punished. Ethan betrayed you. He betrayed me. And now he’ll choke on the very ambition he sold his soul for.”

She stumbled back, shaken. “You’re… using me to get back at him.”

Damian set the glass down, his hand catching her chin, forcing her to meet his piercing eyes. “No, Lila. You are not a pawn. You are the blade. The reminder. The reckoning. He will never know what he lost until it’s too late—and by then, you’ll already belong entirely to me.”

Her heart pounded, torn between fear and a dark, twisted thrill.

“You mean to destroy him,” she whispered.

Damian’s lips curved into a slow, chilling smile. “Not just destroy. Break him. Piece by piece. And the sweetest irony?” He leaned so close his breath brushed her ear. “He will beg me to save him, not knowing I am the one tightening the noose.”

Lila’s body shivered. For the first time, she wondered if she had given herself not just to a Dom, but to something far more dangerous—a man who could ruin lives with a single move.

And worse still… she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to stop.

Ethan stood in the foyer of the house, phone to his ear, eyes scanning the walls as though the plaster itself hid secrets. Anna’s voice droned from the speaker — something about their upcoming engagement dinner and her father’s “expectations.” But Ethan wasn’t listening. There were footprints where there shouldn’t be footprints. Two wine glasses in his father’s study. A faint trace of perfume he didn’t recognise clinging to the banister.

“Ethan?” Anna’s voice snapped. “Are you even there?”

He forced a laugh. “Yeah. Just distracted. I’ll call you later.”

He hung up, his jaw tight. Something was going on in this house. Something his father wasn’t telling him.

Upstairs, Lila sat curled on the edge of the bed, fingers twisting the hem of her sleeve. Damian was at the window, staring out over the garden with the stillness of a predator.

“He suspects,” she whispered.

“Good,” Damian said without turning. “Suspicion breeds mistakes. Mistakes give me leverage.”

Lila swallowed. “You wanted him to notice?”

Damian finally faced her. “Of course. A trap without tension is no trap at all.”

He crossed the room, crouching so his eyes were level with hers. “Listen carefully, Lila. Anna’s father thinks he’s binding Ethan to his company. Ethan thinks he’s marrying for power. But the contract they’ll sign at the engagement dinner — the one Ethan will so proudly initial — is a time bomb. It locks him into debt and gives me controlling interest when it collapses.”

Lila’s eyes widened. “You’re… setting him up to lose everything.”

“Everything,” Damian echoed. “His reputation. His company. His marriage. And when the dust clears…” His fingers brushed her cheek, but this time not in dominance, only in emphasis. “…he’ll look at me and thank me for saving what little he has left, never realising I built the cage myself.”

A floorboard creaked outside. Lila stiffened.

What’s next ??