Chapter 48 Bloodstained Obsession

• The silence that followed Damien’s words was deafening, the kind that crawled beneath the skin and left no escape from its weight. Ivy stood frozen in the dimly lit study, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths that betrayed the storm raging inside her. The papers Damien had dropped between them — those cursed files dredged up from the ruins of a life she thought buried — lay sprawled across the desk, their edges curling as though scorched by the truth they carried. Names, numbers, signatures… proof that the past she had fought so desperately to outrun was not only alive but had been mapped, catalogued, and studied by the very man standing before her.
• Damien had not looked away from her since the confession slipped from his mouth, a confession that held more gravity than he let on. His dark eyes, always sharp with calculation, softened only slightly — not out of remorse, but something heavier, something she couldn’t name. His hand remained on the desk, near the files, the veins taut against his skin as though he were resisting the urge to shred the evidence and pretend none of this had happened. But pretending wasn’t in Damien’s nature, and Ivy knew it. He was a man built of brutal truths, of power born from ruin, and of sins no confessional could ever wash clean.
• Her throat tightened as she forced words past her lips. “You knew.” It wasn’t a question; it was an accusation, and one she wasn’t sure she could survive uttering.