The bookstore was supposed to be neutral ground. A public, bustling space filled with the quiet rustle of pages and the smell of ink and old paper. It was Damian's concession after the medical center panic attack—a small, monitored taste of the outside world, a "reward" for enduring the tests.
He stood a few feet away, ostensibly examining a first edition of *The Great Gatsby*, but his attention was a physical weight on my back. I could feel it, the fine-tuned focus of a security detail tracking a high-value asset. I trailed my fingers along a shelf of poetry, the familiar names—Dickinson, Plath, Neruda—offering a faint, comforting echo of a self I might have been.
Then I saw him.
Ethan.
He was in the philosophy section, pulling a heavy volume of Kierkegaard from a high shelf. He hadn't seen me. For a moment, I just watched him—the familiar slope of his shoulders, the way he bit his lip in concentration. A memory, not of an event, but of a *feeling*, washed over me: safety. Ease. A stark contrast to the vigilant tension that perpetually surrounded Damian.
My heart gave a painful, hopeful thud. An ally. A piece of my past that wasn't shrouded in mystery or control.
Before I could think, I took a step forward. "Ethan?"
He turned, and his face transformed. The initial surprise melted into a warmth so genuine it felt like sunlight after a long winter. "Aria. My God." He started toward me, his arms opening slightly in an aborted gesture of embrace before he stopped himself, his eyes flicking past my shoulder. The warmth dimmed, replaced by caution. "You're… out."
"Just for a bit." I couldn't keep the relief from my voice.
His gaze sharpened, scanning me. "How are you? Really?"
"Confused." The admission was easier with him than it had ever been with Damian. "Lost."
He nodded, his expression softening with empathy. "I can only imagine." He lowered his voice. "I tried to call. To visit. The hospital, then the house. I was told you weren't receiving visitors. By *him*."
The accusation was clear. Before I could respond, a shadow fell over us.
"Aria." Damian's voice was a silken blade. He materialized at my side, his presence instantly shrinking the space. He didn't touch me, but he positioned himself fractionally between Ethan and me. "We're leaving."
"We just got here," I protested, a flare of defiance igniting.
"Change of plans." His eyes, cold and assessing, were fixed on Ethan. "Carter."
"Hart." Ethan didn't back down, but he straightened, squaring his shoulders against Damian's implicit threat. "It's good to see Aria looking well."
"Your opinion on her well-being is irrelevant." Damian's tone was dismissive, final. He placed a hand on the small of my back, a proprietary gesture that felt like a brand. "Come."
Ethan's eyes dropped to that hand, and a flicker of anger crossed his face. "She's not a parcel, Hart. She can speak for herself."
"She is recovering from a severe trauma under my care," Damian said, each word clipped and precise. "And you are an unnecessary stressor. This conversation is over."
"Is that what you're calling it? Recovery?" Ethan took a half-step closer, his voice dropping, but losing none of its intensity. "Or is it reprogramming? Making sure the version of her that wakes up is more… compliant?"
The air between them crackled with a hostility so potent it felt like ozone. Other patrons were beginning to glance our way.
"You know nothing about what she needs," Damian hissed, the veneer of civility cracking to reveal raw, protective fury.
"I know she was afraid before the accident!" Ethan shot back, his own control slipping. "I know she called me the night she left you!"
The words landed like a grenade in the quiet bookstore.
*The night she left you.*
My breath caught. I looked from Ethan's flushed, defiant face to Damian's, which had gone pale and terrifyingly still.
"You're lying," Damian said, but the words lacked conviction. They sounded hollow, haunted.
"Am I?" Ethan pressed, his eyes blazing with a righteous fury. "Ask her what she remembers about that night. Oh, wait. She doesn't. How convenient."
"Stop it," I whispered, but neither man heard me.
"You filled her head with poison then, and you're trying to do it again now," Damian snarled, closing the distance so he was mere inches from Ethan. He was taller, broader, radiating a violence held in check by sheer will. "You have no idea what you interfered with. The danger you encouraged her to run into."
"The only danger I saw was *you*!" Ethan shouted, finally losing his composure. "She was terrified of you, Hart! She said you were suffocating her!"
A bookseller was approaching, her face concerned. "Gentlemen, please—"
Damian didn't even glance at her. His entire world had narrowed to Ethan and the damning accusations hanging in the air. The truth of my past unhappiness, given voice by a witness, was a weapon he couldn't deflect.
I saw it then—the moment Damian's control shattered. Not into rage, but into something more terrifying: a cold, absolute resolve.
He turned to me, his eyes burning with a possessive fire. "We. Are. Leaving." He didn't ask. He didn't guide. His hand clamped around my upper arm, his grip firm and inescapable.
"Damian, you're hurting me—" I gasped.
He didn't loosen his hold. He began marching me toward the exit, a force of nature cutting through the bookstore.
"Let her go!" Ethan moved to block our path.
Damian stopped. He looked at Ethan, and in that look, I saw the CEO who crushed mergers, the man who built an empire on uncompromising will. "If you ever approach my wife again," he said, his voice deathly quiet, "I will ruin you. Not your career. You. I will dismantle your life piece by piece until there is nothing left but the memory of the mistake you made today. Do you understand?"
Ethan blanched, the color draining from his face. The raw, unchecked power in Damian's threat was unmistakably real.
Without another word, Damian propelled me forward, past a stunned Ethan, past the gawking customers, and out into the blinding afternoon sun.
He didn't speak in the car. The silence was a thick, furious cloud. His jaw was clenched so tightly I could see the muscle leaping. His hand, now resting on his knee, was curled into a white-knuckled fist.
I rubbed my arm where his fingers had dug in, the ghost of the pressure lingering. The physical mark would fade. The other mark—the public claiming, the humiliation, the terrifying display of his power—would not.
Ethan's words echoed. *She was terrified of you.*
Was it true? Had the woman in the mirror, the one who signed divorce papers, been afraid of the man who now held the keys to my entire existence?
The car pulled through the mansion gates. As they swung shut behind us with a final, metallic clang, Damian finally spoke.
"Ethan Carter is forbidden," he stated, his voice flat and emotionless. "You are not to contact him. You are not to see him. Is that clear?"
It wasn't a question. It was the laying down of a new, immutable law.
I looked at him, at the stark, beautiful profile etched with a bitterness I hadn't seen before. The jealousy wasn't romantic. It wasn't about losing my affection. It was about a challenge to his authority. Ethan wasn't just a man from my past; he was a symbol of a time when I had resisted, when I had tried to leave.
And Damian would burn down the world before he let that symbol near me again.
The prison of Hartwood had just gotten a new, uncompromising warden. And the first rule was simple: no one from the life before was allowed in. Especially not the ones who reminded me I'd once wanted out.