The silence stretched between them, taut and waiting to snap.
Damian didn't move. Not when Eva's fingers trembled around the red key, not when her chest heaved like she'd just surfaced from drowning. Only his eyes moved—watching her, calculating, searching her face like it might unravel some answer he hadn't seen coming.
"You broke into my office," he said at last, voice razor-sharp. "Why?"
"I think you know why," Eva replied, her voice low, raw.
She tossed the ledger onto his desk. It hit the mahogany with a soft thud that sounded like thunder in the charged silence. Pages spilled open, revealing rows of neatly written names—some crossed out, others marked with dates, locations. Her sister's name wasn't there. But Eva could feel her ghost between the lines.
Damian didn't even flinch.
"You're mistaken," he said simply, brushing a speck of dust from the surface. "That's not what you think it is."
"Don't insult me," she snapped. "You're running a blood empire, and this—" she pointed to the ledger, "—is your kill list."
His eyes narrowed. "You know nothing about what that book means."
"Then enlighten me. Tell me why your people used my sister's name as bait. Tell me what happened to her. Tell me why there's a goddamn red key hidden under your floorboards."
The silence this time felt like a verdict.
Damian rose slowly from his chair. He didn't yell. He didn't threaten. That would've been easier to face. Instead, he walked around the desk and stopped just short of her, close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off him.
"You think this is about vengeance?" he asked. "You think you're going to destroy me with a book?"
"I don't care if I destroy you," Eva said. "I just want the truth."
His mouth twitched—humorless, bitter. "The truth won't give you peace, Eva. It'll burn you alive."
"Then let it," she whispered.
Something in him shifted. For a second, a crack in the armor—pain, old and deep, flickered in his eyes. But it was gone before she could grab it.
He reached past her, plucked the red key from her fingers with a practiced calm. "If you want answers, you're going to need to follow me."
"To where?"
"The house your sister died in."
Eva stared at him. Her heartbeat roared in her ears, louder than the rain now starting to tap against the tall windows behind him. The house her sister died in. The words looped in her mind, refusing to settle.
He moved first. A turn of his wrist, a press of a hidden panel on the bookcase behind his desk—and a door slid open where there had been only wood and shadow.
"Now," Damian said. "Before I change my mind."
Eva hesitated. The red key was gone, back in his pocket. The ledger still lay open on the desk, glaring proof that something sinister beat beneath the polished surface of his empire.
She stepped through the passage.
The walls closed in quickly, stone replacing drywall, cold air brushing her skin. The staircase descended sharply—no lights, no rails, no comfort. Only darkness and the distant hum of something alive.
"Is this some kind of trap?" she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice.
"If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't be breathing," he replied. "Not here."
They walked in silence for what felt like forever. The air thickened as they descended, metallic and old. Finally, they stopped before an iron door. Damian didn't use the red key. He placed his palm on a scanner embedded in the wall and, after a mechanical click, the door creaked open.
The room inside wasn't what Eva expected.
Not a torture chamber. Not a bloodstained cellar. It was a vault.
Photographs lined the walls—faces, notes, timelines. An entire investigation mounted like a shrine. Eva's breath hitched. In the center of it all: a picture of her sister, Celeste. Smiling. Frozen in time.
"I don't understand…" she whispered, stepping forward.
"You wanted truth," Damian said. "Here's where it begins."
He walked to the photo and tapped the bottom edge. It flipped open like a hinge, revealing a smaller picture beneath it. Celeste—again—but with someone else. A man Eva had never seen. His hand rested protectively on her sister's shoulder, his face half-turned from the camera.
"Who is that?"
"Her fiancé. Mateo Lanza."
Eva blinked. "Celeste never told me she was engaged."
"She didn't want you involved," he said simply. "Because Mateo wasn't who he claimed to be. He was part of an offshoot syndicate—one that wanted me dead."
A horrible chill ran through her.
Damian continued, voice low. "Celeste infiltrated them on my orders. She volunteered. Said she had a better chance of getting close. I tried to pull her out when I realized how deep it had gotten."
"But you didn't."
He nodded. "She insisted she could handle it. The last message I got from her was a warning."
He pulled out a crumpled, time-worn envelope. Inside was a scrap of paper, hastily scribbled in Celeste's hand: He knows. If I don't make it back, tell Eva I'm sorry. Tell her it was never about revenge.
Eva clutched the paper, her knees weakening beneath her.
"You let her die," she said. "You used her."
Damian's voice cracked. "I loved her."
Silence.
He rarely spoke like that. Ever. Not even in the week she'd been here, testing him, probing him for cracks. But now… there was grief carved into his words. Real, raw grief.
"I wanted revenge," he said. "But Celeste made me promise not to go after them. She said truth was stronger. She was wrong."
Eva's vision blurred with unshed tears. She hated him. And yet… she didn't. Not completely. Not anymore.
"So why keep me here?" she asked hoarsely. "Why the games? The marriage?"
Damian met her eyes. "Because the same men who killed your sister think you're just a pawn. I made you my wife to protect you."
The vault buzzed with silence. All the air had been stolen from her lungs.
"This doesn't change what you've done," she whispered.
"I know," he said. "But it might help you understand why I did it."
Eva turned toward the wall of photographs again. Faces stared back at her—some dead, some missing, all connected by a web of violence and silence.
She saw it now. The scale of it.
"What happens next?" she asked.
"We burn them all," Damian said.
And for the first time, Eva didn't flinch.
She simply nodded.
"I want to light the first match."