Sleep in the Hart Mansion wasn't rest. It was a trapdoor.
One moment, I was sinking into the plush oblivion of the bed, and the next, I was falling. Not through space, but through memory—or the terrifying, formless void where memory should have been.
I was running. The polished floors of the mansion stretched before me, not in the elegant, familiar lines I knew, but warped and elongated, a funhouse mirror of my waking life. The air was thick, syrup-slow, resisting every stride. My own panting breaths were the only sound, until they weren't.
Footsteps. Behind me. Measured, relentless, gaining with an impossible, silent speed.
I didn't dare look back. I knew, with a bone-deep certainty, that if I saw what followed me, I would shatter.
My bare feet slipped. I looked down. The pristine white marble was slick, dark. Not water. Blood. It welled up between the seams of the stone, warm and sticky, coating my soles. The hem of a nightgown—white silk, now ruined—was soaked with it.
A hand clamped around my upper arm from behind, fingers like steel bands.
I screamed, the sound tearing from a place of pure, animal terror. I whirled, swinging my free arm blindly.
My fist connected with something solid. A jaw.
I woke up screaming for real.
The sound was raw, violent, torn from the very core of my nightmare and dumped into the silent, opulent bedroom. I was sitting bolt upright, drenched in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. My right fist was clenched so tightly my nails had bitten half-moons into my palm. My left arm throbbed where the phantom grip had been.
I gasped, gulping down air that felt thin and useless. The echo of the scream died, leaving a ringing, profound silence that was worse. The room was too big, too dark, the shadows in the corners too deep.
I couldn't stay here. The dream clung to the sheets, pooled on the floor with the moonlight. I stumbled out of bed, my legs unsteady, and fumbled for the door handle.
The hallway was a canyon of shadows. I moved on instinct, my body remembering a path my mind did not. Down the main staircase, through the darkened drawing room, into the cavernous kitchen. Here, there were no portraits, no mirrors, just cool stainless steel and the lingering scent of lemon cleaner. It felt neutral. Safe.
I filled a glass with cold water from the tap, my hands shaking so badly the water sloshed over the rim. I drank greedily, the chill a shock to my system, a tether to the present.
"You're shaking."
I choked, water spraying. The glass slipped from my fingers, shattering on the slate floor in a burst of crystalline violence.
Damian stood in the kitchen doorway, backlit by the dim nightlights from the hall. He was dressed in dark trousers and a t-shirt, his hair mussed, his feet bare. He looked utterly unlike the daytime CEO. He looked real. And he looked alarmed.
"Don't—" I stammered, backing up a step, my bare feet perilously close to the shards. "Don't sneak up on me."
"I didn't mean to." His eyes swept from my terrified face to the glittering wreckage on the floor. "Stay there. Don't move."
He moved with a quiet efficiency, fetching a broom and dustpan from a closet. He didn't turn on the overhead light, working in the half-dark. The soft *swish-swish* of the broom was the only sound. He knelt, carefully picking up the larger pieces, his movements focused and oddly calming to watch.
"I had a nightmare," I said into the quiet, my voice still unsteady.
"I heard." He didn't look up. "You used to have them. Bad ones."
"What were they about?" I asked, wrapping my arms around myself.
He paused, a sliver of glass poised over the dustpan. "You never said. You'd just wake up… like that. Terrified. Sometimes you'd talk in your sleep. Fragments."
"Like what?"
He emptied the dustpan into the bin and straightened. In the gloom, his expression was unreadable. "Names. Places. 'Don't let them in.' 'It's in the contract.' Once, you just kept repeating 'the roses are wrong.'"
*The roses are wrong.* The phrase landed with a peculiar, dissonant weight. I glanced instinctively toward the window that faced the moonlit garden.
He followed my gaze. "You loved the white roses. Hated the red ones. Said they looked like…" He trailed off.
"Like blood," I finished softly, the words coming from somewhere outside of me.
He went perfectly still. "Yes."
The connection between my dream-blood and the waking-world roses was a thread, thin and sinister, pulling taut between my past and present.
He walked to the sink, washing his hands. "I'll make you tea. The chamomile blend. It… helped. Sometimes."
While the kettle boiled, he mopped the spilled water from the floor. I watched him, this billionaire in his midnight kitchen, cleaning up my mess. The domesticity of it was more jarring than any grand gesture.
He set a steaming mug on the island in front of me, then leaned against the counter opposite, keeping the wide stone surface between us. A deliberate boundary.
I wrapped my hands around the warmth. "Did you used to sit with me? After?"
"For a while." His voice was low. "You'd let me. Then… you stopped wanting me there. You'd lock your door."
Another piece of the bleak puzzle. The withdrawing wife. The locked door.
"The nightmare felt like a memory," I confessed, staring into the pale gold tea. "I was running. In the house. There was blood on the floor. And someone… grabbed me."
His knuckles whitened where they gripped the edge of the counter. "Did you see who?"
I shook my head. "No. But I fought. I think I hit them." I flexed my sore right hand.
His eyes dropped to my fist, then flew back to my face. A strange, complex emotion flashed in his eyes—something like grim satisfaction, immediately smothered by concern. "Good."
"Good?"
"If it was a memory," he said, his voice hardening, "then you fought. You didn't just run. You fought back. That's important."
"Why?" The question was a whisper.
"Because the woman who got in that car…" He swallowed, the words seeming to cost him. "Some people thought she had given up. I never believed that. A nightmare where you fight… that sounds more like you."
It was the first time he'd offered a glimpse of his belief in me, rather than just his need to protect me.
"The hand that grabbed me," I said, the detail rising with awful clarity. "It was strong. A man's hand."
The air in the kitchen turned to ice.
Damian pushed off the counter, his posture rigid. "Aria."
"Was it you?" The question hung in the space between us, dangerous and direct.
He looked as if I'd physically struck him. The pain in his eyes was instant and profound. "No," he said, the word stark and absolute. "I would never—" He cut himself off, dragging a hand over his face. "The thought that you could dream that… that you could fear me that way…" He couldn't finish.
His reaction was too raw, too wounded, to be anything but genuine. The relief that flooded me was immediately followed by a deeper, more chilling fear. If not him, then who?
"The night of the accident," I said slowly, piecing together the nightmare and his warnings. "Was I running *from* someone?"
He turned away, bracing his hands on the sink, his head bowed. The muscles in his back were taut with tension. "I can't have this conversation with you at three in the morning, halfway out of a night terror."
"Then when?" I demanded, frustration breaking through the fear. "When is a good time, Damian? When I'm fully awake and you're wearing your CEO armor and can deflect me better?"
He turned back, his eyes blazing in the dim light. "When I'm sure that telling you won't send you spiraling back into that hospital bed! When I know you're strong enough not just to hear the truth, but to survive it!"
His shout echoed off the stainless steel. We stood frozen, the truth of his fear—his sheer, desperate terror for me—vibrating in the air.
The fight drained out of me, replaced by a cold, clear understanding. He wasn't just keeping secrets. He was standing guard over a truth he genuinely believed was a loaded gun pointed at my head.
I took a sip of the tea. It was floral, calming. "You said the tea helped sometimes. What did you do when it didn't?"
A long pause. "I'd talk to you," he said, his voice rough. "About nothing. The markets. A book I was reading. The history of the wallpaper in the east gallery. Anything to give your mind something boring and solid to latch onto, to pull you out of the dark."
"Talk to me now," I whispered.
He stared at me. Then, slowly, he pulled out the stool next to me and sat down. Not touching. Just present.
He began to speak. Not about secrets or dangers, but about the silent film star who had once owned the mansion, about the architect's ridiculous feud with the landscaper, about the hidden symbolism in the carved woodwork of the main hall. His voice was a low, steady rumble in the quiet kitchen, a lifeline of mundane reality.
I listened, my eyelids growing heavy, the sharp edges of the nightmare softening, blurring. The image of the blood on the floor faded, replaced by the mundane detail of 1920s plumbing disputes.
As my head began to nod, I felt not a hand, but the soft weight of a cashmere throw being draped carefully over my shoulders.
I didn't open my eyes. "Thank you," I murmured into the fabric.
His answer was so quiet I almost missed it. "Always, Aria."
When I drifted off this time, there were no footsteps chasing me. Only the echo of a voice in the dark, telling me a story about wallpaper, holding the monsters at bay with the sheer, ordinary power of a man who remembered how to calm his wife's storms, even if she could no longer remember why.