42. Damien
Damien
The silence in this place is almost holy.
The walls are bare. The floor is concrete. The only sound is the rhythmic tick of the old grandfather clock in the hall—each second like a heartbeat.
Like hers.
I sit in the high-backed chair near the window, fingers steepled beneath my chin, staring at the monitor still mounted in the corner of the room. It’s been playing the wedding footage on loop. Grainy. Bloodstained. Beautiful.
The chaos. The screams. The flash of fire.
The way Lucien ran into the wreckage like a martyr.
The way Dante grabbed Evelyn’s wrist and yanked her from the tent.
They were so predictable.
I watch it again.
And again.
And again.
Until the taste of ash coats my tongue and I smile.
“I built that moment,” I whisper to the empty room. “I carved it from s ilence and delivered it like a sermon.”
But she ruined the ending.
Harmony.
The traitor.
I lean forward, teeth grinding, muscles tight as a piano wire.
She had the clutch.
She planted the devices.
She looked me in the eye … and then turned.
The memory sears red behind my lids. Her mouth forming the words— I’m still yours —the night before she shattered the illusion I created. Just before she made a mockery of my control.
She thinks I won’t find her.
She thinks I’ll let her disappear into the cracks of the world like some gutter rat scurrying from light.
But she forgets who I am.
I am the dark.
And I will smother every flicker of rebellion she sparked.
My eyes drift closed, and I let myself sink into the dream again.
The one that’s been repeating for days.
Lucien and Dante on their knees. Stripped. Bloodied. Evelyn screaming in the background. Astra crying without a sound. I slit Dante’s throat first—slow, deliberate, just enough to let him feel it.
Then Lucien.
Oh, Lucien.
I won’t kill him quickly.
I want him to beg.
I want him to see what it feels like when the world burns and there’s nothing left to save.
My phone buzzes on the table.
I answer without checking. Only one person calls this number now.
“Reese,” I say, voice low.
“Nothing,” he says. “No sign of her.”
I don’t reply right away. My grip tightens around the phone, knuckles going white.
“She’s hiding,” he adds.
“No,” I murmur. “She’s running. There’s a difference.”
“She covered her tracks. Whoever helped her… they knew what they were doing.”
“Lucien,” I spit. “Or Dante. Maybe both. But it doesn’t matter.”
Reese exhales. “You want me to keep looking?”
I stare out the window, watching the moon reflect off the blade lying on the desk. My favorite. The one I used on Enrique.
“I want you to dig, ” I say. “Start with the girls we haven’t touched yet. Follow every whisper. Every shadow. I don’t care what it costs. Find her.”
“And if I do?”
I smile. “Don’t touch her. Don’t speak to her. Just tell me where she is.”
“And Lucien?”
I chuckle. “He’ll bleed before summer ends. That I promise you.”
Click.
I hang up.
The room is quiet again.
But the silence isn’t holy anymore.
It’s hungry.
And so am I.
I rise from the chair like a man resurrected.
But there is no god here. Only me.
And I am starving.
I pace the length of the room, barefoot, the cold concrete kissing my heels like penance. My mind fractures and refocuses with every step. Harmony’s face flashes behind my eyes—not the obedient version, not th e one I sculpted with fear and reward, but the newer one. The liar. The Judas.
The ticking of the clock grows louder.
Louder.
Louder.
Until I can’t tell if it’s time passing or just the sound of my blood boiling behind my ears.
I throw the chair across the room.
It splinters against the far wall, collapsing into jagged limbs and a broken spine.
Like her.
That’s how I’ll find her. How I’ll leave her.
Bent.
Twisted.
Unrecognizable.
And still mine.
I stagger toward the desk, dragging my fingers through my hair until strands pull free. My reflection glints off the blade beside the monitor, and I stare into it like it might offer me an answer. It doesn’t.
It only grins.
A sliver of silver madness sharpened by betrayal.
She was my masterpiece.
And now she’s graffiti.
Fucking street trash smeared across the canvas of my empire.
I smash my fist into the desk, the pain blooming like worship. Bone meeting wood, meeting rage, meeting the part of me that never learned to lose.
“They think I’m done,” I whisper. “They think this was the crescendo.”
But they don’t understand—
I haven’t even started the second movement.
I kneel in front of the monitor like a disciple, eyes locked on Harmony’s last recorded frame.
She’s stepping out of the rec room.
That final glance over her shoulder.
The whisper.
The lie.
“You were supposed to be the altar,” I growl. “But now you’ll be the offering.”
I slap the screen.
Once.
Twice.
Until my palm leaves a blood smear over her face.
“Do you know what happens to those who defy gods?” I snarl. “They get rewritten.”
I stumble back, laughing now.
Manic.
Wild.
The kind of sound that makes lesser men flinch and stronger men kneel.
I drag my fingers through the blood on the monitor, tracing her outline, humming an old lullaby I don’t remember learning.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The clock won’t stop.
Neither will I.
Because I’m not chasing Harmony anymore.
I’m hunting.
And when I find her?
I won’t just break her.
I’ll remake her.
I ’ll pull the bones from her body and rebuild her spine with obedience.
I’ll hollow her out and stuff her full of silence.
And when she begs me to kill her?
I’ll kiss her instead.
Because death would be too easy.
And I am not a merciful god.
I am Midas.
And everything I touch bleeds gold.
Even her.
Even now.