The silence that followed the departure of Eleanor Doren and Bianca Vane was heavy, a suffocating blanket that seemed to absorb the very oxygen in the mansion. Hannah didn't wait to be caught on the landing. She retreated into the master suite, her heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against her ribs. She felt small—smaller than she had in the prison yard—shrunken by the vitriol of a woman she once called a second mother.
She was standing by the window, staring out at the grey, indifferent Pacific, when she heard the door click. Dermin didn't announce himself. He didn't need to. The very air in the room shifted, turning electric and dense with his presence.
"It's poor manners to eavesdrop on your husband's conversations, Hannah," he said. His voice was a calm, low vibration, devoid of the irritation he had shown his mother.
Hannah didn't turn around. She kept her eyes on the horizon, her reflection in the glass looking like a ghost haunting a palace. "I didn't have to eavesdrop to hear the truth," she rasped. "Your mother is right, Dermin. You've built this... this empire. You have a name that people fear and respect. Why are you dragging it through the mud for a nobody like me?"
She finally turned, her eyes bright with a mixture of unshed tears and a decade of fermented spite. "You saw her. Bianca. She's stunning. She's 'fitting.' She has a pedigree that matches your stock prices. She fits you perfectly, just like your mother said. She hasn't spent ten years staring at a concrete wall. She doesn't have a 'prison stare.' You should marry her. Let me go back to the gutter where I belong."
Dermin moved toward her, his pace slow and predatory. He had shed his overcoat, and his white silk shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the hard, stubborn line of his throat.
"Bianca Vane is a business transaction," Dermin said, stopping just inches from her. The scent of him—sandalwood and cold ambition—enveloped her. "She is a decorative piece for a life I find tedious. I don't want a business transaction for a wife, Hannah. I told my mother, and I will tell you: I don't want anyone else. It was always you. It was you ten years ago, and it is you now."
"A wife?" Hannah let out a jagged, hysterical laugh. "What kind of wife do you think I'll be? A wife who flinches when you walk into a room? A wife who looks at you and sees the man who stole her youth? I will never be a 'real' wife to you, Dermin. I will never allow you to touch me. I will never share your bed in anything but name. So tell me... what kind of marriage is that? A hollow shell? A long, slow suicide?"
Dermin's expression didn't change. He reached out, his hand hovering near her waist, though he didn't make contact. "I don't mind a hollow shell, if the shell is yours. And as for touching you..." A slow, dark smile tilted the corners of his mouth. "I am a very patient man, Hannah. I waited ten years to get you behind these gates. I can wait a few more months for you to realize that you belong to me. It's only a matter of time before you let me in."
"Never," she hissed, her face contorting. "I will find the money. I will get that hundred million dollars, and I will break this marriage into so many pieces you'll never be able to glue it back together. I'll buy my freedom, Dermin. I'll buy it with my blood if I have to."
Dermin leaned back against the mahogany bedpost, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He looked at her with a clinical, amused detachment that infuriated her more than a blow would have.
"How do you plan to earn a hundred million?" he asked, his voice conversational, as if they were discussing the weather.
"I'll do it..." Hannah shot back, her chin trembling with defiance. "I'll work, I'll scrape, I'll find a way... even if it takes a lifetime."
Dermin's cold smile deepened, the gold flecks in his blue eyes dancing with a terrifying light. He stepped closer again, invading her space until she was pressed against the cold glass of the window.
"Then learn to exist with me... for a lifetime," he murmured, his voice a dark caress. "If you're willing to spend your life paying a debt, spend it here. Have children. Live as a couple. Eat, sleep, and breathe as Mrs. Doren... like every other couples."
The mention of children felt like a physical strike. Hannah's breath hitched in her throat, a wave of revulsion washing over her.
"You'll never have children with me," Hannah snapped, her voice shaking with pure, unadulterated loathing. "I'll never let you touch me, Dermin. I'll never let your blood mix with mine. I'll never give you the satisfaction of a legacy built on my broken life."
Dermin didn't flinch. He leaned in even closer, his face inches from hers, his gaze dropping to her trembling lips. The intensity of his presence was like a physical weight, a gravity she couldn't escape.
"We'll never know if we don't try," he whispered.
He didn't kiss her. He didn't have to. The promise of the struggle, the slow, agonizing erosion of her will, was written in every line of his face. He looked at her not as a husband looks at a wife, but as a conqueror looks at a city he has already surrounded.
Hannah stared back, her eyes wide and full of a hatred that was starting to feel dangerously like an obsession. She was trapped in his house, under his name, and now, under the shadow of a future he had already mapped out for her.
"Go to hell, Dermin," she whispered.
"I've been there for ten years, Hannah," he replied, his voice dropping to a rasp as he reached out to tuck a stray hair behind her ear. "I think it's time we both tried a different kind of fire."
He turned and walked toward the door, leaving her shivering in the morning light, the weight of the "lifetime" he had asked sitting on her shoulders like a shroud.