Chapter 162: The Devil’s War Declaration

​Damian didn’t argue. He crossed the room and sat, resting his forearms on his knees, breathing carefully through the dull throb in his side.

​Ana stepped between his knees, setting the supplies down on the edge of the mattress. The sudden proximity was suffocating. She poured antiseptic onto a cotton pad, trying to ignore the heat radiating from his bare chest.

​"This will sting," she murmured.

​"Just do it," he rasped.

​She pressed the pad against the irritated skin beside the wound. Damian’s breath hissed sharply through his teeth, his abdominal muscles locking like iron beneath her fingers.

But instead of flinching back, his hand came up, heavy and possessive, his fingers wrapping around the curve of her hip to anchor her firmly in place.

​Ana kept her eyes glued to the black threads, dabbing away the dried blood with methodical precision. But the silence in the room began to fray her nerves.

The memory of Valerie’s voice, the absurdity of anyone thinking Damian Sterling was capable of soft feelings, pressed against her ribs until she couldn’t swallow it down anymore.

​Her hands slowed against his skin, a bitter, fragile tremor running through her fingertips.

​Damian noticed instantly. His fingers bit slightly harder into her hip.

​"What?" He demanded, his voice low and grating. "You’re handling me like glass, Anastasia. What’s in your head?"

​Ana tried to pull back, reaching for the gauze, but Damian’s other hand rose, his fingers wrapping around her wrist in an unyielding vice. He forced her hand down, his dark gaze pinning her hazel eyes.

​"Don’t play games with me this morning," Damian warned, his voice a low rasp. "You walked in here looking at me like I’ve already done you an injury. What did Valerie tell you last night?"

​Ana let out a breath that sounded like a fractured laugh. The anger and the quiet, persistent ache of being kept in this sterile cage finally bled through her defenses.

​"She thinks you care about me," Ana said, her voice quiet, dripping with cold irony. "She actually thinks that beneath all this brute force, you treasure me. Isn’t that hilarious?"

​Damian’s dark eyes narrowed, unblinking, tracking every flicker of emotion on her face. He didn’t offer a defense. He didn’t soften.

​"She told you that, did she?" he murmured.

​"Yes," Ana whispered, pulling against his grip on her wrist, though he didn’t budge an inch. "And it just reminded me of what a joke this entire arrangement is. You hunt me down when I walk out of an office, you drag me into corners, you mark your territory like an animal... but you made sure I knew the rules from the start. You told me to my face that you would never give me love."

​Her voice caught slightly, but she forced herself to look right into the cold void of his eyes.

​"So don’t look at me like you have a right to know what’s in my head, Damian," she said bitterly. "You bought my compliance. You didn’t buy my thoughts."

​A dangerous, suffocating stillness descended over the room.

​Damian didn’t let go of her wrist. Instead, he pulled her closer, shifting his weight forward until she was pressed against his parted thighs, his broad shoulders blocking out the gray morning light.

​"I told you the truth, Anastasia," Damian said, his voice dropping into a dark, gravelly register that seemed to vibrate against her skin. "I told you I don’t have soft words or gentle devotion to offer you. I told you love in this family is a liability, and I won’t pretend to feel something that I am incapable of feeling."

​His hand moved from her hip, sliding up the curve of her ribs, his palm hot against her thin shirt until his fingers lightly framed her throat, his thumb resting right against the wild beat of her pulse.

​"But you mistake coldness for indifference," Damian rasped, leaning close enough that his warm, uneven breath grazed her mouth. "I don’t love you. But you are mine. Every inch of your skin, every breath you take under this roof, the name on your papers... it belongs entirely to me."

​His obsidian eyes bore into hers with a possessiveness so dark and absolute it made her chest ache.

​"I will never give you romance, Anastasia. But I will crush every man who looks at you twice, I will take steel through my own ribs to keep you untouched, and I will keep you trapped by my side until the day I rot. You don’t get to ask for soft feelings from a monster... doll. You settle for the fact that I will burn this city to ash before I ever let you go."

​Ana’s lips parted, her breath trembling against his. The blunt, brutal honesty didn’t heal the ache in her chest, but the sheer, terrifying conviction in his voice pinned her to the spot, leaving her entirely powerless against the shadow of his claim.

​"Now finish the dressing," Damian commanded quietly, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw once before dropping away. "Before I show you exactly what happens when you mistake my honesty for an exit."

***************************

The penthouse dining room was bathed in the thin, cold light of mid-morning.

​A fresh pot of black coffee steamed on the marble island alongside sliced fruit and warm pastries, but the air around the table remained taut enough to snap.

Damian had finally buttoned a fresh charcoal shirt over his freshly taped ribs, his sleeves rolled precisely to his forearms. He pulled out the heavy head chair, taking his seat with a quiet, measured stiffness.

​Valerie slammed down her mug of green tea with a sharp clack against the marble.

​"You’re an absolute idiot, Damian," Valerie began without missing a beat, her glare burning with fury. "Working until four in the morning when your surgical incisions aren’t even seven days old? I had to send Ana in there just to keep you from tearing yourself open! You think you’re invincible, but you’re one bad move away from an emergency ward!"

​Damian didn’t flinch.

He picked up his cup of black coffee, his dark, shadowed gaze drifting down the length of the table toward Anastasia.

​Ana sat entirely still across from him, her fingers wrapped around a glass of orange juice. Her eyes were glued strictly to the linen placemat, refusing to meet his gaze, the burning memory of his brutal declaration in the bedroom still raw against her skin... You don’t get to ask for soft feelings from a monster.

She kept her jaw locked, shutting him out with a wall of quiet, stubborn silence.

​Damian set his cup down, the fine porcelain clicking softly against the saucer.

​"Sterling Corporation dropped seven percent in European after-hours trading," Damian said, his voice flat, gravelly, and entirely stripped of emotion.

​Valerie’s lecture died instantly in her throat.

She blinked, her anger giving way to sharp confusion. "What? Why? The quarterly projections were stellar."

​"Because it wasn’t an accident," Damian replied, his dark eyes never straying from Anastasia’s averted profile. "Two of our senior institutional board members orchestrated an artificial sell-off through Luxembourg shell accounts. They smell blood because of my medical absence. They think they can force a vote of confidence on Monday, trigger a fire-sale of our Class-A assets, and dilute my voting majority before my recovery is finished."

​Ana’s gaze finally flicked up, her analytical instincts cutting straight through the tension between them. Her hazel eyes met his with an involuntary jolt of alarm. "They’re attempting a hostile liquidation from the inside."

​"They’re attempting a suicide run," Damian corrected, his voice dropping into a dark, predatory timber that made the spacious penthouse feel suddenly claustrophobic.

​He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over the table, entirely uncaring of the dull throb pulling at his freshly dressed flank.

​"By the time the markets open tomorrow, those two will no longer hold a single vote. I am restructuring the entire shareholder panel before the opening bell. Sovereign funds from Singapore and private venture blocs have already agreed to absorb every dumped share. I am cleaning out the board completely."

​Valerie looked at him in disbelief, her voice hushed. "Damian, that’s an all-out bloodbath. The regulatory scrutiny alone will trigger lawsuits across three continents. You can’t fight a multi-front corporate war while you can barely breathe through your stitches!"

​A slow, chilling shadow of a smile touched Damian’s lips. It was devoid of warmth, filled only with the lethal, unyielding arrogance that had built an empire from bone and steel.

​His obsidian gaze pinned Anastasia, demanding that she witness every ounce of the monster she had accused him of being.

​"Then let them file their suits," Damian rasped, his jaw tightening like iron. "I built this empire, and I will dismantle anyone who tries to carve away a single inch of it. I am taking this board to war... and I will not stop until every traitor is ruined. Even if I bleed out on the boardroom floor."