Chapter 53 Past Mistakes

• The silence after Damien’s words felt heavier than the storm outside. The fire in the hearth crackled with restless energy, throwing flares of orange light that danced across the shadows of the room, but even that couldn’t thaw the ice spreading in Ivy’s chest. She had braced herself for many of his cruelties, endured his taunts, his punishments, his possessiveness—but nothing had prepared her for the soft, lethal way he had whispered her sister’s name, as if it were a trigger that cracked open the walls she had fought so hard to build around herself.
• Her pulse throbbed in her throat, frantic, and though she willed her face into a mask of composure, she felt the edges fraying. Damien watched her with that insufferable stillness of his, lounging back in the leather armchair like a king on a throne, his expression carved from something more dangerous than stone. His cigarette smoldered between his fingers, leaving a thin trail of smoke that coiled into the ceiling like a serpent.
• “Say it again,” Ivy forced out, her voice low, even though every nerve in her body demanded she scream, demanded she claw answers out of him. “What did you mean by bringing her into this? My sister is dead. You don’t get to—”