Chapter 197: The Devil’s Memory

The rain beat down relentlessly against the black canvas of the canopy, drowning the graveyard in a bleak, sodden gray.

Damian stood directly beside the polished mahogany coffin, his twenty-one-year-old frame rigid, suffocated by the borrowed black wool of a mourning suit that felt like armor he hadn’t yet earned. He looked down at the dead man resting beneath the brass handles—the man whose broad shoulders and steady hands had once promised to protect this family from the ruin of the world.

That promise was rotting in the damp earth. Damian was barely holding himself together, his knees locked so tightly to keep from shaking that the strain burned through his calves.

A few feet away stood his mother, Victoria. She moved among the mourners with a face carved from pale porcelain, nodding politely and offering detached platitudes to people who had only come to witness a scandal. She looked like a statue. But Damian knew every crack beneath the surface; he saw the mechanical tremor in her wrist each time she adjusted her veil. She was shattered.

Beside her sat Valerie, barely a teenager, swallowed whole by an oversized dark coat. She clutched a threadbare teddy bear tightly to her chest, her wide, terrified eyes darting between the adults. She was too young to grasp the finality of a coffin, but she sniffled into the stuffed bear’s ear simply because the air in the room was so thick with grief that it made her throat burn.

Then came the murmurs.

They hovered near the perimeter of the tent, shielded behind black silk umbrellas, their hushed tones carrying a venom meant to slice through the solemn hymns.

"Can you believe the nerve? An open service after what he did?"

"...embezzled millions right under their noses. Arthur was their trusted head butler for twenty years, and he bled the Vance accounts dry."

"...hung himself the moment the auditors showed up at the estate gates. The coward couldn’t even face the charges."

The word coward scraped against Damian’s spine like broken glass. Inside his pockets, his fingers curled into brutal, white-knuckled fists, his nails biting so deep into his palms that he wondered if the fabric would stain with blood. Yet he kept his obsidian eyes glued forward, staring at the coffin lid. He refused to give the vultures the satisfaction of seeing him snap.

He swallowed the bile in his throat, breathing through the iron taste of rage, forcing his shoulders to remain square.

Until a sudden ripple tore through the rear of the tent, and a whisper broke loud enough to shatter the funeral hush completely.

"Wait... isn’t that Anastasia Vance?"

A collective intake of breath seemed to stall the rain itself. Heads turned in unison toward the gravel path.

"What is the daughter of the Vance family doing here? Her father is the one who accused Arthur of the fraud. What kind of sick mockery is this? Why on earth is she here?"

Damian’s jaw locked, the sheer restraint holding him together snapping like a fraying wire as his dark eyes tore away from his father’s casket and snapped toward the entrance of the tent.

Every scrap of control Damian possessed evaporated in a single, violent breath.

He didn’t walk toward her. He closed the distance in three predatory, ground-eating strides, the guests parting like frightened sheep before the sheer, suffocating fury rolling off the twenty-one-year-old heir.

Anastasia stood just beneath the dripping hem of the canopy, a frail silhouette drenched by the downpour, clutching a small, wilted bunch of white lilies in her bare hands. Her face was soaked with rain and streaked with silent tears, looking small and fragile in an environment that wanted to tear her apart.

Damian didn’t give her a chance to speak.

His large, calloused hand shot out and clamped around her slender upper arm in a bruising, punishing grip. With a brutal yank, he dragged her clean off her feet, hauling her out from beneath the shelter and straight into the torrential rain and wet mud of the cemetery path.

"Damian, please!" Ana cried out, stumbling blindly as her patent leather shoes lost traction on the slick grass. "Damian, stop—it hurts! Please!"

"Get out!" Damian snarled, his voice a guttural, feral rasp that echoed over the roll of thunder. He shoved her away from the tent, dragging her further down the desolate gravel road toward the iron cemetery gates. "How dare you show your face here? How dare you step foot near his grave?"

"Please, just let me see him!" Ana begged, her voice cracking into a desperate sob as she reached out with her free hand, clawing at the soaked wool of his sleeve. The rain plastered her hair to her pale face, her lips trembling blue from the cold. "Just let me say goodbye to him, Damian! He was the only person who ever protected me! He was the only one who stood by me in that house!"

"Shut your mouth!" Damian roared, hauling her closer until his face was inches from hers, his fingers digging into her arm with enough force to leave deep, dark bruises beneath her skin. The hatred, the shame, and the agonizing grief of a boy forced into manhood overnight spilled out of him like boiling acid. "You think you get to mourn him? Your father killed him! Your family put a noose around my father’s neck, branded him a thief, and chased him to his death! You are Vance filth, Anastasia. You come here with your pathetic little flowers to mock his corpse?"

"No, Damian, I swear—"

"You’re a parasite! Every single one of you deserves to rot in the dirt where my father is going!" he spat, every word laced with venom, unloading every ounce of the world’s cruelty straight onto her shoulders.

"Damian, no—please, look at me," Ana wept, the wilted lilies slipping from her grasp into the sodden mud.

Instead of shrinking away, she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms desperately around his neck. She pressed her wet face into the hollow of his shoulder, hugging him with all the fragile, breaking strength she had, trying desperately to offer comfort, trying to anchor him against the raging storm of his own grief.

"I’m sorry," she sobbed into his soaked collar. "Damian, I’m so sorry, please..."

The warmth of her touch hit him like a white-hot brand.

Something inside him snapped completely—a wild, unbearable terror that her touch might break his armor, that if he gave in, the shame would drown him whole.

With a harsh, violent heave of his chest, Damian wrenched his arms forward and shoved her off him with terrifying force.

Ana was thrown backward through the rain. Her feet lost purchase on the slick, muddy embankment, and she crashed violently to the sodden ground. The sharp, jagged gravel of the path bit deep into her palms, tearing the soft skin and ripping through the knees of her dark tights.

A sharp cry tore from her throat as she landed hard in the dirt, blood mingling instantly with the red mud around her hands and knees.

She stayed there on the ground, trembling and weeping, lifting her bloodied, stinging palms as she looked up at him through a curtain of rain.

Damian stood towering over her, his chest heaving like a wounded beast, rain coursing down his rigid jaw. He refused to look down at her bleeding hands. He refused to look into those wide, hazel eyes brimming with shattered sorrow. He forced his gaze to fix somewhere cold, empty, and dead in the distance.

He turned on his heel, his shadow looming long and merciless over her collapsed form.

"If you ever come near me again," Damian said, his voice dropping into a flat, venomous vow that froze the very marrow of her bones, "if you ever dare step into my sight, or near my family, I will make your life a living hell. I swear to God, Anastasia, I will destroy you."

Without waiting for an answer, he marched back toward the funeral tent.

Inside his pockets, Damian’s fingernails drove straight through the meat of his palms, tearing the flesh until warm, slick blood coated his fingers. He walked through the downpour with his jaw locked so hard it felt cracked, ignoring the searing pain in his hands, ignoring the muffled sound of her sobs fading behind him in the storm.

He didn’t turn back.

He didn’t look.

He didn’t dare, because if he looked back at the girl bleeding in the mud, he was terrified of what he might become.

The master study was draped in heavy shadow, the only illumination bleeding from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the distant, sprawling grid of city lights.

Damian sat in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk, his tie undone, the top buttons of his black dress shirt loosened. A heavy crystal tumbler rested near his elbow, the amber liquid inside burning down by half with every passing hour.

Between his long, scarred fingers, a thin trail of gray smoke curled toward the vaulted ceiling from a lit cigarette.

Tonight, the silence of the penthouse was louder than any boardroom, thicker than any storm.

Damian brought the cigarette to his lips, inhaling deeply. The bitter heat seared his throat, but it did nothing to quiet the echo ringing in his ears.

"What kind of life are you offering a child when you have nothing warm inside you?"

He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke swirl into the darkness and vanish against the glass.

"Is it because you still think of me as the daughter of your enemy?"