Chapter 235: Chapter

Chapter 236

The rain pounded violently against the roof of the armored Maybach as it tore through the soaked streets of the Upper East Side.

Inside, Anastasia sat in rigid, lifeless silence. Her hands were still clutched tightly over her stomach, her hazel eyes fixed on the empty leather seat beside her where Damian’s heat had vanished into the cold night. She didn’t blink. She didn’t cry. The silence inside her skull was absolute, a hollow crater where a war had just ended in total ruin.

The car descended into the subterranean, iron-gated garage of Julian and Clara’s private limestone townhouse. The heavy security grates slammed shut, sealing out the flashing lights of the trailing press vehicles.

Julian wrenched the door open immediately, extending a steady, gentle hand. “Ana. Come inside.”

She moved like a phantom, her limbs stiff and numb.

Clara met them at the private elevator doors, her champagne gala gown already discarded for a thick cashmere cardigan. Without speaking a word of pity, Clara wrapped a soft wool throw over Ana’s bare, freezing shoulders and guided her straight upstairs to the second-floor library suite, locking the heavy mahogany doors behind them.

The moment the lock clicked, the fragile, glass-thin composure that had kept Anastasia standing through the museum’s open microphone completely shattered.

Her knees buckled.

Clara caught her around the waist, lowering her onto the thick Turkish rug before the hearth. The black silk gown pooled like dark ink on the floor.

A ragged, tearing gasp tore from Ana’s throat—followed by the raw, suffocating sobs she had locked inside her chest for two agonizing years. She wept not with quiet tears, but with a visceral, gut-wrenching grief that rattled her ribs, burying her face into Clara’s shoulder as the memory of the cold Zurich clinic, the empty white sheets, and the quiet death of their child tore through her all over again.

Clara held her tightly, running fingers through her undone hair, whispering quiet, fierce comforts into the dark as Ana bled out the secret that had ruined her life.

Five miles south, fifty-four stories above the city.

The private express elevator chimed, its brass doors sliding open into the penthouse.

Damian stepped out into the dark foyer, drenched to the bone. The midnight-wool tuxedo was plastered to his broad shoulders, rainwater dripping steadily from his dark hair onto the polished marble. His tie was ripped open at the throat, his knuckles scraped and bleeding from where he had driven his fist into the stone balustrade of the park before hailing a car.

He did not look like a man. He looked like a wounded, rabid beast trapped inside a glass cage.

*She bled in an empty clinic in Zurich.*

*She carried your child alone.*

*She walked away because she thought you threw her away.*

The silence of the sprawling penthouse—the penthouse where he had dragged her, where he had pinned her against the glass, where he had demanded her submission and claimed her body while completely blind to her bleeding soul—suffocated him like cyanide.

A low, guttural roar ripped from Damian’s chest.

He lunged forward with blinding, unhinged violence.

His massive hands gripped the colossal marble console table in the entry gallery—a half-ton slab of polished imported stone—and flipped it clean off its brass pedestals. It crashed into the marble floor with a concussive, deafening crack, shattering into jagged shards.

He didn’t stop.

The ruthless titan who bought and sold empires lost his mind in the dark. Damian tore through the penthouse like a hurricane of pure, self-loathing destruction.

He swept his arm across the glass bar, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of vintage crystal and aged scotch exploding violently against the far wall in a spray of amber liquor and flying glass. He ripped the heavy bronze sculptures from their plinths and hurled them through the floor-to-ceiling glass display cases, the sound of exploding mirrors and screaming metal echoing through the empty halls.

He was drowning in his own blood.

*His child.* The child he never held. The child he had driven into the cold because his monstrous pride, his venomous silence, and his twisted games had made his wife believe he had taken another woman into their bed.

Damian staggered into the center of the devastated living room, his chest heaving in violent, ragged gasps. The floor was covered in splintered wood, shattered crystal, and dark droplets of his own blood dripping from his shredded palms.

He stood amidst the wreckage of his own empire, burying his bruised hands into his drenched hair, a choked, broken sound escaping his throat as he fell to his knees in the dark.

Back at the townhouse, the fire crackled low in the hearth.

The violent storm inside Ana had finally quieted into an exhausted, hollow stillness. She sat curled on the deep leather sofa, holding a steaming mug of black tea between trembling hands, her eyes swollen and staring into the amber flames.

Clara quietly slipped out into the hall to answer a secure perimeter call, leaving the heavy oak door ajar.

Julian walked in with measured, quiet steps. He carried no arrogance, no aristocratic smirk. He pulled an armchair opposite Ana and sat down, leaning his elbows on his knees, his face lined with grim exhaustion.

“He’s at the penthouse, Ana,” Julian said softly, his voice low in the quiet room. “Henry confirmed it. He trashed the entire main floor. He is… not in his right mind.”

Ana didn’t look up from her tea. Her voice was barely a whisper, flat and devoid of warmth. “Why would he be? He just found out the wife who walked away had a secret of her own. He hates not having control.”

Julian leaned back slightly, exhaling a heavy, solemn breath.

“Is that really what you think this was, Ana? Control?”

Ana’s hazel eyes flicked up, cold and defensive. “He walked out of the car, Julian. He left me in the rain without a word. Just like he did two years ago.”

“Damian walked out of that car because he couldn’t look at you without wanting to kill himself for what he did to you,” Julian countered bluntly, his tone unyielding yet deeply somber.

Julian leaned forward, his gaze locking dead-center onto hers.

“You think Damian was keeping another woman in that house that night, Anastasia. You still believe Vivian’s poison.”

“I saw him, Julian!” Ana’s voice broke, the sharp pain surging to the surface. “I stood at the top of the stairs! I watched him carry a woman through the rain into our home in the middle of the night! He wouldn’t let me down the stairs, he wouldn’t let me speak to him, he locked the master doors and told me to stay in my place! What was I supposed to think?!”

“You were looking at Valerie, Anastasia!” Julian said firmly, the truth finally detonating in the quiet room.

Ana froze, her fingers locking onto the ceramic mug.

“Vivian didn’t just whisper rumors to you, Ana,” Julian continued, his voice dropping into a dark, raw cadence. “Vivian was playing both sides of the board. That night, Vivian took Valerie to the Stark family estate in the Hamptons and fed her enough barbiturates and psychological venom to push her straight over the edge. Valerie slit her wrists in the bathtub.”

The color drained from Ana’s face, her breath catching in her throat.

“Damian broke the bathroom door down with his bare hands,” Julian whispered, the horror of that night heavy in his eyes. “He tied tourniquets around his own sister’s arms. The paparazzi had already caught wind of an incident—if the press found out the Sterling heiress had tried to end her life over their late father’s scandal, the board would have stripped the family of everything, and Valerie would have been placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold that would have destroyed her permanently.”

Julian shook his head, looking directly into Ana’s stunned, wide eyes.

“Damian didn’t call an ambulance because he was hiding her from the vultures. He carried his dying sister through the back service entrance of your house in the driving rain. He had a private surgical team sneak through the basement to stitch her up in the guest wing. That’s why he locked you in the master suite, Ana. Not because he was betraying you—because he was covered in his sister’s blood, trying to keep her alive, and he was too proud, too terrified, to let you see the Sterling family rotting from the inside.”

The library fell into a petrified, deafening silence.

The ceramic mug slipped from Ana’s numb fingers, clattering onto the saucer.

“He… he was saving Valerie,” she breathed, the horror of the realization crashing through her like a tidal wave.

“Yes,” Julian said quietly. “And while he was keeping his sister breathing in the east wing, Vivian was sending you anonymous texts telling you he was in another woman’s bed. You walked out the next morning, Ana. Damian thought you left because you hated his family, because you were disgusted by our darkness. He had no idea you were carrying his child. And he had no idea you were bleeding to death alone in Zurich.”

Julian stood up slowly, looking down at her with solemn pity.

“Both of you were bleeding in the dark, Anastasia. And Vivian Stark was the one who held the blade for both of you.”