14. Damian
CHAPTER 14
DAMIAN
I t’s after midnight when I finally leave the office. Honestly, this has become early for me, and it’s not because I’m finished. I just can’t keep pretending it matters anymore.
The city is quiet. This kind of cold gets into your bones no matter how well you dress or how high your penthouse sits above it all.
I walk instead of calling the car. I need to feel something.
The numbers on the quarterly sheet were worse than expected. Vincent is moving in faster now, bold enough to go public with the damage. I saw my name in an article tonight. “Kincaid Empire in Decline?”
They’re not wrong.
The calls aren’t returned. The hands that once reached for mine in boardrooms are suddenly clasped tightly in Vincent Grey’s.
Through it all, there’s only one thought I can’t shut out—she’s gone, and not because of Vincent. Not because of betrayal.
Because of me.
She asked for truth, and I gave her silence.
She asked for vulnerability, and I gave her strategy.
When she stood in front of me, willing to love me even at my weakest… I was too afraid to reach back even though I thought I was ready this time. I thought I had everything under control. I told her I loved her, but words were never enough.
I stop at a bench across from the sculpture garden where she once dragged me on a cold morning to “look at frozen art with warm coffee.” I hated it, but I never felt more alive than watching her explain shadow and texture like the stone was telling her secrets.
That was one of the first times I knew I was in love with her, and now she’s the one thing I can’t negotiate back.
The empire I bled for is slipping away, but she’s already gone.
I would give it all—every cent, every title, every last boardroom—just to hold her again and say what I never had the courage to: “You were always the most important deal I never closed.”
I sit back against the bench and look up at the sky. The stars are buried in city light, but I try to find them anyway. Fuck me, but I think that’s what I’ve been doing this whole time, reaching for something real in a world I only knew how to control.
But control didn’t save me, and power didn’t keep her.
The only truth I have left is that I want her.
Not the empire. Not the win.
Her.
And I’ll do whatever it takes to say it and prove it before I lose the only thing that’s ever really mattered.
If I haven’t already lost her for good.
* * *
The next day, I find her at the old greenhouse gallery tucked behind Waverly Park. She used to volunteer here before her career exploded. I remember her saying once that this was her place to breathe, to just be.
I never deserved to know that detail. But she gave it to me anyway.
The place hasn’t changed. Ivy curls around rusted trellises, and the glass panels above filter the afternoon light into fractured gold and shadow. It smells like earth and lavender and something faintly citrusy. There are tiny brushstrokes of beauty everywhere—potted succulents with name tags, chipped statues wearing scarves someone’s left behind, and little hand-painted signs that read “grow gently” and “stay curious.”
She’s bent over a table of herbs, her fingers brushing soil from her palms, a smear of green paint on her wrist. She’s always beautiful, but especially while making something bloom.
She looks soft and precious… and painfully out of reach.
Her hair’s tied back in a loose, messy knot with strands falling into her eyes. She’s wearing a worn denim apron splattered with color. Her cheeks are flushed, and there’s a smudge of terracotta on her collarbone.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more radiant, and I’ve never hated myself more. She gave me this—her warmth, her honesty, her wild magic—and I buried it beneath boardroom silence and ego.
I step forward slowly. “Isabelle.”
She looks up, and it takes everything in me not to fall to my knees. Her eyes grow wide, and she flinches.
I take a breath like it might hurt. It actually does. My chest is all tight, and my heart is pounding.
“I don’t expect you to listen,” I start, “but I need to say it anyway.”
She glances away, but at least she hasn’t walked off.
So I keep going even though my voice is shaking. My walls are gone. This is what she wanted, and I’m doing my best to give it to her.
“I was wrong,” I murmur, “about everything.” I move a step closer, my chest even tighter now. “You asked me to meet you in the truth, and I failed. I chose control over courage. I chose silence over you.”
Her jaw tightens, but she doesn’t speak.
“I thought I was protecting myself, but really, I was protecting the part of me that was too afraid to admit how much I need you.” I swallow hard. “I let the empire come first. I let him get into my head. I let fear decide how I treated the one person who ever saw me. Not the name. Not the wealth. Just… me.”
She blinks but still says nothing.
I drop my gaze to the floor. “I hate what I became. I hate that I let you walk away thinking you didn’t matter. You’re not just the woman I love, Isabelle. You’re the only thing that ever made this life feel worth anything.”
Silence.
“I don’t know how to be enough for you, but I’ll spend every day trying if you let me,” I add quietly, barely above a whisper.
Finally, her eyes soften just slightly. Her throat moves as she swallows. “Damian…”
“I’m sorry, Isabelle. I… I don’t want a second chance at business,” I say, voice breaking. “I want a second chance at you, and if I’ve already lost that… then please… just know I’m sorry. For every time I held back. For not choosing you when it mattered most.”
And then I do something I’ve never done before. Not in love. Not in life.
I drop to my knees right there in the dirt and sunlight and paint-splattered beauty of her world.
If groveling is what it takes to show her that she’s everything, I’ll stay on the ground until she forgives me.
Or walks away for good.