25. Damian
CHAPTER 25
DAMIAN
T he walls are coming down. Not metaphorically. Not quietly.
There are actual lawyers in the boardroom. A growing list of resignations. The press is circling like vultures. My phone hasn’t stopped vibrating in hours, but I’ve stopped answering.
None of it matters anymore.
I’m standing in my penthouse, my shirt half-buttoned, tie discarded on the floor, staring at the skyline like it might give me answers. It doesn’t.
The city I once conquered blinks back at me. It’s unmoved and uninterested. It’s unaffected by the man who thought he could outrun loss with power.
Clara tried to warn me this morning. She tried to pull me into another strategy call, another war room session, but I walked out. She didn’t follow.
She finally understands what I do. This war is over.
Vincent can have the board. The headlines. The damn tower if he wants it.
I’ve spent my life building a fortress around myself, brick by calculated brick, and all it did was keep the one person I love out.
Isabelle .
The woman who stood beside me when the floor was shaking.
The woman who looked at me like I was more than what I owned, more than what I controlled.
I’m terrified that if I don’t change and stop this now, I’ll repeat my past mistakes again. I’ll try to shelter her from the fire by shutting her out of the fight.
I grab my coat. She’s the only thing that ever mattered.
* * *
It’s raining by the time I get to her building. I’m soaked, but I don’t run. I walk. I deserve to be drenched.
When she opens the door, her eyes widen. “Damian…”
I step inside, wet and uninvited, and I speak before she can ask. “I lost it,” I say. “Naomi. The board. Maybe the whole company.”
She stays quiet.
I look at her, not as a man trying to win, but as one finally ready to lose everything else if it means keeping her.
“I’ve been afraid for a long time,” I continue. “Afraid that if I let go, I’d fall apart. That if I didn’t control it all, I’d disappear.”
She steps closer but doesn’t interrupt.
“I thought I had to choose between power and love,” I say, “but that was a lie. The truth is, I was never powerful until you loved me.” I take a breath from somewhere low in my chest. “I don’t want to protect you anymore, Isabelle. I want to let you in. I want to build something with you. Something real. No strategies. No defenses. Just us.”
Her eyes shimmer.
I brace myself for reaction at all—rejection, forgiveness… whatever she’s about to say.
I have next to nothing to offer her now. What kind of future can I provide her now? She could very well want to walk away, cut her losses, and move on, and how could I blame her for that?