Chapter 67: The Devil’s Entertainment... Watching Her Suffer
The heavy glass partition was raised, isolating the back of the Maybach in suffocating silence as it glided through the rain-slicked city streets.
Anastasia sat stiffly in the plush leather seat, her eyes fixed on the passing streetlights. The warmth of Damian’s hand had retreated to his own lap, but the weight of his words at the dinner table still pressed heavily against her chest.
She turned her head to look at him. Damian was casually scrolling through emails on his phone, his sharp jawline set, completely unfazed by the storm he had just brewed in her mind.
"Damian," Ana spoke, her voice quiet but sharp enough to slice through the quiet hum of the engine.
"Hmm?" He didn’t look up from his screen.
"What did you mean back there?" Ana asked, her pulse quickening. "Telling your mother that I belong by your side... that we’ll handle our timeline on your terms?"
Damian lowered his phone slowly, his obsidian eyes shifting to meet hers in the dim interior light. "I said what was necessary, Anastasia. My mother needed a decisive answer, and I gave her one."
"It sounded like an announcement, Damian," she pressed, leaning slightly closer, her dark eyes searching his unreadable face. "We agreed to play a role. But you talked as if... as if you’re planning to trap me into another marriage."
A slow, dark smirk tugged at the corner of Damian’s lips.
"Trap you?"
He shifted his body, leaning over her until his broad frame shadowed her completely, trapping her back against the leather door.
"You were already bound to me the moment you signed your name on that slave contract, sweet angel. Keeping up this grand reconciliation facade is for the entire world to digest... my board, the press, and my own family. A piece of paper changing your title is just formalizing what is already fact."
Ana’s breath hitched, a cold shiver running down her spine. Before she could protest, the second question burning in her mind spilled out.
"And what Valerie said... about security following me?" Her voice trembled slightly. "Is it true? Did you really have men watching me after our divorce?"
Damian’s dark eyes narrowed slightly, his expression turning cold and brutally pragmatic. "Yes."
The blunt admission hit Ana like a physical blow. "Why?" She whispered, her voice laced with sudden, aching betrayal. "You left me to rot in poverty, Damian! I was working double shifts, struggling to pay rent, barely affording food! If you had men following my every move... why did you watch me suffer for two years without lifting a finger?"
"Because your father’s creditors were hunting for anyone tied to the Vance name," Damian said coldly, his baritone razor-sharp.
"If I had stepped in publicly or handed you a fortune, they would have seized every cent and dragged you directly into his money laundering trial. Letting you live quietly... appearing utterly abandoned and broke... was the only way to keep you completely off their radar while I privately destroyed every entity threatening your freedom."
Ana stared at him, her chest heaving as the shock morphed into a bitter, burning anger. She pushed against his chest, her dark eyes flashing.
"Don’t lie to me," she gritted out, her voice shaking with raw, unchecked emotion. "You didn’t do it to protect me. You watched me suffer because your pride couldn’t handle that I walked away from you. You let me starve and break because you enjoyed my suffering."
Damian didn’t flinch. He didn’t even attempt to deny it.
Instead, his dark eyes gleamed with a cold, ruthless amusement. "I won’t deny... it was rather entertaining," he purred smoothly, "watching you realize exactly how cold the world is without my protection."
A sharp, agonizing pain ripped through Ana’s chest. Her hands curled into fists against her lap, her fingernails biting into her palms.
She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to hit his chest and cry that it was because of his twisted control and coldness that they had lost their baby.
But the words died in her throat, choked by her own crushing, inescapable guilt.
Because deep down, she knew he wasn’t the sole reason for their loss. If she hadn’t been such a naive fool back then... if she hadn’t swallowed Vivian Stark’s poisonous lies whole, if she hadn’t been manipulated into thinking Damian’s own sister, Valerie, was his secret fling... she never would have spiraled into that blind panic.
If she hadn’t run that night, overwhelmed by a web of lies she failed to see through, their baby would still be breathing.
The silence between them grew thick, suffocating, and heavy with the ghosts of their past.
Damian watched the fight drain out of her eyes, replaced by that haunting, familiar sorrow. He reached out again, his large hand wrapping firmly around the nape of her neck, his thumb stroking her pulse point as he pulled her back into his space.
"And speaking of control..." Damian murmured low against her ear, his breath warm and dangerous against her skin, banishing the ghosts from the car. "Do not forget the promise you made to me in my office last week."
Ana blinked, pulling herself out of her dark thoughts, her mind flashing back to her pleading for Marcus’s job. I will do anything... whatever you ask.
"You said you would do whatever I asked of you if I brought your colleague back," Damian reminded her, his voice a velvet threat. "I haven’t collected on that favor yet, Anastasia. So don’t worry about when or how we marry... just worry about what I am going to demand from you when the time comes."
________________________
When the car finally pulled into the penthouse’s private garage, the silence between them was oppressive, weighed down by unspoken grief and unspoken threats.
Ana retreated directly to the master suite, her mind spinning as she tried to strip away the high-society armor. She unpinned her hair, kicked off her heels, and stood before the vanity mirror in her silk slip.
Her hands were still trembling from the ghost of her own guilt and the lingering echo of Damian’s terrifying words.
The bedroom door clicked open.
Ana’s gaze snapped up in the mirror. Damian stood in the doorway, shedding his suit jacket and tossing it onto a chair. He slowly unbuttoned his collar, his obsidian eyes locking onto her reflection with a dark, predatory intensity.
There was no warmth in his expression... only a cold, consuming hunger that made her blood run cold.
"Damian..." Ana whispered, turning around slowly, her back pressing against the cold edge of the vanity. "What are you doing?"
"Taking what is mine," Damian said, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling register as he crossed the room with slow, deliberate steps.
Before she could step back, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a heavy silk blindfold along with a set of cold, polished silver handcuffs.
Ana’s breath hitched, a sudden wave of fear and confusion striking her chest. "Damian, no... wait..."
"Quiet, Anastasia," he purred low, backing her up until her knees hit the vanity.