The boardroom was too warm.
Damien Thorne sat at the head of the obsidian table, silent as the voices around him overlapped—urgent, rehearsed, clawing for dominance. Screens flashed quarterly projections and PR fallout in bullet points. None of it moved him.
Except one image. Ava. Her face—fierce, unyielding—plastered across a media slide, captioned with "The Senator's Daughter Returns: Redemption or Deception?"
Edward Marks, slick in navy and snake-smiling, tapped the screen. "We need distance. Investors are skittish. Cameron Blake's expose is gaining traction. And if Ava Hart's credibility shatters—"
"She hasn't," Damien said, voice cutting through like frost.
The room paused. His tone had always been more effective than shouting.
"She hasn't shattered," he repeated, quieter now. "And she won't."
Edward leaned forward, poker-faced. "You're betting the company's image on a woman whose entire brand is built on PR and secrets. Even your engagement looks... convenient."
"It was convenient," Damien said. "Until it wasn't."
The room exchanged glances.
"I suggest," Edward continued smoothly, "you get ahead of the optics. End it before she takes us all down."
But Damien was no longer listening. His gaze had fallen on a corner of the screen—an old article thumbnail. He knew that date. Knew the weight of it.
His mother's memorial.
He hadn't spoken her name in a decade aloud. Gloria Thorne. Concert pianist. Philanthropist. The only person who ever saw him before he learned how to disappear behind numbers and strategy.
And now her memory was being used as collateral.
After the meeting, Damien retreated—not to the penthouse, but to the music room on the 51st floor. The baby grand sat untouched, as always. He shut the door. Sat down. Let his fingers rest on the keys.
He didn't play. Not yet.
Instead, he thought of Ava. The way she stood her ground even when the world turned. The way her voice cracked, but her eyes didn't. She wasn't just part of the plan anymore. She was the risk.
And he was tired of avoiding fire.
He pressed one note. Then another.
Outside the door, no one would know the Ice King had cracked.
But inside—he was playing again.
He played the opening chords of his mother's favorite nocturne—haltingly at first, then with something like muscle memory. The sound echoed in the cavernous glass room, a fragile thing among steel and silence.
Each note pulled a thread inside him he'd stitched shut. He hadn't touched this piano since the night Gloria Thorne died—suddenly, in the middle of her own charity gala, wearing the necklace he'd given her for his first million.
Damien had buried music after that. Buried feeling.
But Ava had disturbed something.
Her fire, her defiance, even her heartbreak—none of it was tidy. She reminded him of his mother in the worst ways: honest, unbending, unafraid of the truth. And in this world, honesty got you ruined. His mother had believed people could be good. Ava believed they could be better.
He wasn't sure either was true.
A soft knock at the door jolted him. His hands froze mid-phrase.
"Sir?" It was Lena's voice—careful. "You should see this."
He opened the door. Lena handed him her phone.
A video had just dropped. A leaked recording. Cameron Blake, captured in a dim bar, talking to someone off-screen.
"The girl's easy bait. She's dying to rewrite her story—doesn't even realize she's walking into a minefield. I don't need to make anything up. Her past's already radioactive."
Damien's jaw clenched. "When was this recorded?"
"Three nights ago. Ava hasn't seen it yet."
He handed the phone back without a word.
Lena studied him. "If you're going to protect her, now's the time."
"I'm not protecting her," he said.
But he was already reaching for his coat.
Because this wasn't about damage control anymore.
The elevator ride down was a blur of metal and memory. Damien's mind raced—not with strategy, but fury. Cold, measured fury. The kind that simmered under skin, the kind he'd spent years refining into control. Cameron had crossed a line.
Not just professionally. Not just with the firm.
With Ava.
Outside, the city stretched silver and indifferent beneath the night sky. He stepped into his car, gave his driver a clipped address—Cameron's apartment downtown—and leaned back, fingers drumming against the leather armrest.
He'd warned Cameron once. Stay out of personal affairs. Stay out of his affairs.
The video changed everything. Damien could handle threats to his business, his name, even his fortune. But this—
This was a calculated humiliation. The intent was surgical: wound Ava, expose her, isolate her. Cameron hadn't just gone for blood. He'd gone for narrative.
The difference was subtle. And unforgivable.
When the car stopped, Damien didn't wait. The doorman recognized him and stepped aside wordlessly. On the fifteenth floor, he didn't knock. He used the emergency override key he still had from a lifetime ago—back when trust had been real between them.
Cameron opened the inner door, half-dressed, glass of whiskey in hand.
"Well, if it isn't the Ice King—"
The glass shattered against the wall.
Damien's fist came next.
"You think this is a game?" Damien's voice was quiet. Lethal. "You drag her name through the dirt to get to me?"
Cameron staggered, wiped blood from his lip, laughing. "Isn't it always about you, Damien? You think she's clean? She's just as good at spinning truth as the rest of us. Only difference is, you're stupid enough to believe her."
Damien grabbed him by the collar. "You ever speak her name again, you won't walk away."
"Too late," Cameron spat. "The story's already out."
Damien dropped him. Stepped back.
And smiled.
"That was your last move," he said, coldly. "Now watch what happens when the board flips."
He walked out without looking back, fire in his blood.
This wasn't just war now.
It was personal.
Damien's steps echoed down the hallway like a metronome gone rogue. Each stride away from Cameron's apartment was a reminder: control is a choice. And right now, it was slipping.
The elevator doors closed around him like a vault, and for the first time in years, Damien let his mask slip.
Not in public. Not in front of Ava. But here, in this capsule of glass and silence, his jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
He leaned his head back, eyes closed.
You're just like him.
The words came unbidden, a voice from the past—Gloria's, soft and warning. She had once looked at him with a heartbreak he hadn't understood. Not until now.
Power made monsters. His father had proven that. Damien had spent his life building walls of steel and silence to become the opposite of that man. To be better. Calculated. Controlled.
But tonight, standing over Cameron's bleeding mouth and broken pride, he'd felt that same heat in his veins. The same reckless, destructive hunger.
He deserved it.
The thought came swiftly, almost soothing. But then—Ava's face flickered behind his eyes. Not afraid, not angry. Just… disappointed.
That haunted him more.
The elevator opened directly to his penthouse. Dim city light spilled in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He didn't bother turning on the lamps. Instead, he walked straight to the baby grand piano tucked into the far corner—his mother's.
He hadn't touched it in months.
His fingers hovered over the keys like they didn't belong to him. Then, slowly, he played the first few chords of Gloria's favorite piece—Debussy's "Clair de Lune."
It sounded broken.
No amount of precision could smooth the fracture he felt inside.
His phone buzzed against the marble countertop.
Lena.
"You need to see what the press is saying—now."
He walked over, picked up the phone, and froze.
Ava's name was trending. Alongside his. Thorne's PR Princess or Political Pawn? one headline read.
The leak had gone viral.
He set the phone down. Calmly. Carefully.
Then he looked out at the city, the same city that had taught him to take, to win, to dominate.
But for the first time, Damien wasn't sure if winning would be enough.
Not if it meant losing her.
Damien didn't sleep.
The piano sat in silence now, a ghost in the room. He stood at the glass wall of the penthouse, watching the city pulse with indifferent life. The headlines continued to climb. Each one slicing deeper than the last.
"From PR Strategist to Scandal Muse—Who Really Is Ava Hart?"
"Damien Thorne's Engagement Implodes Amid Political Intrigue."
The buzz of his team trying to contain the firestorm echoed in emails, missed calls, and panic-laced texts. But he didn't move.
What haunted him wasn't the scandal. It was Ava's silence.
She hadn't called. Not once.
And that terrified him more than any press.
He poured a drink he didn't want. Sat in the dark and let the past creep in.
He saw Gloria at the piano again, her fingers dancing across the keys like they knew something he never would. He remembered her humming while reading the newspaper—back when they could still pretend the Thorne name meant something clean.
When she died, the silence became familiar. Expected.
Now it was unbearable.
At some point near dawn, Damien sat on the floor beside the piano. He leaned his head back against the leg of it, blazer still on, eyes burning. The drink sat untouched beside him.
"I'm not like him," he whispered into the dark.
But the city didn't answer.
Neither did Ava.
His phone buzzed again. This time, a message from Lena:
"She's not at her apartment. She's gone off-grid. Just thought you should know."
Damien stared at the screen. Then typed two words:
Find her.
But after he hit send, he didn't feel the usual surge of certainty. He felt… hollow.
Because maybe this time, it wasn't a matter of finding her.
Maybe it was about whether she'd ever let herself be found again.
He didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until the light shifted. Morning had painted the penthouse in golds and silvers—mocking warmth that didn't reach him.
Damien blinked, disoriented. The piano beside him, silent. The city below, moving without pause.
He reached for his phone instinctively. Nothing. No missed calls. No texts from her.
He scrolled through old photos—ones he kept hidden in a locked folder. Ava in Paris. Ava on his balcony, barefoot, laughing with a mug of coffee. Ava asleep with a book in her lap, hair falling over her face.
There had been so many chances to stop pretending he didn't need her. So many moments where he could've said it. Chosen her.
Now the silence between them was wide enough to drown in.
A sharp knock snapped him back.
Lena.
He let her in without a word. She crossed her arms, eyes tight with restrained fury.
"You let this happen," she said.
"She lied to me."
"She trusted you," Lena snapped. "There's a difference."
He didn't flinch. Not outwardly. But his hands curled into fists behind his back.
"I'm not the villain in this story."
Lena laughed bitterly. "You sure? Because from where I'm standing, she gave you everything. Her name, her time, her loyalty. And you used it to make yourself look clean."
"I protected her."
"No," she said softly, shaking her head. "You protected yourself. And now she's gone."
Damien turned away, unable to meet the accusation in her voice.
"You know what hurts most?" Lena continued. "She believed you were different. After everything. She believed you wouldn't make her feel small for once in her d*mn life."
The words sliced deeper than he expected.
After Lena left, he stared at the piano again. Then, finally, sat down.
The keys were cold. Resistant.
But his fingers found the melody anyway—tentative at first. It was the song Gloria had once called unfinished. It had never had an ending.
Now, it sounded like regret.
And maybe… hope.
Just barely.
As he played, Damien realized something horrifying and true:
He'd rather burn his legacy to the ground than lose her for good.