DAMIEN
Present day . . .
I resurface from my memories and blink away from the blank spot on the paneled wall. From his place at the bar, Alexander glares at me. I’m sure he’s questioning what had me zoned out. He doesn’t ask but allows me a taste of my drink.
“Do you know why I tried to stop her from going off alone with you? You had an expression of retribution mingled with satisfaction stuck on your face when she nodded in agreement. She detected the same. Bria accepted your offer out of self-punishment, and you delivered it to her. No lack of consideration for what you would cause whatsoever. True, you have the pathetic excuse for not being aware of her condition, but it doesn’t change the outcome. You dealt the first blow on the day of her return and continued using her as your punching bag for the next years. You did this with every disgusted look in her direction and every woman you paraded in front of her until you found the easiest way to crush her through her cousin. But in the haze of revenge, what you didn’t realize was this is what she hoped you’d do. She wanted you to find happiness at the cost of her destruction. You thought you were in charge when she was manipulating you all along. She thought she deserved it, that it was a way to repay her debt to you. Was it worth it? Did you gain anything from all your actions?”
I snarl my response, “I lost everything of worth a long time ago. Gaining something was never the point. It was what was left for me and of me.”
He shakes his head at me and counters, “I’m amazed at the contradictions you represent. Are you sure you don’t have a twin because how can you be the same person who runs a billion-dollar company but has your head in your ass when it comes to your heart?”
My fist bangs with a loud echo on the wood, and my head snaps his way as I raise my eyebrows. “Alexander, Alexander. You should know the answer by now. It’s all because of Bria. The person who motivates me to be the CEO I am today is the same person who can bring out the worst in me. Both sides of me know and respond only to her.”
“Then, did you know the day Bria returned, and you spoke was the day she began to say goodbye? Tonight is her final farewell.” He gestures toward us in a grand gesture. “After that day, she lived even more like a recluse. Every day it got more challenging for me to reach her. My attempts always failed because of you. I didn’t take her from you, and I still didn’t have her. You succeeded in making her react, although you did it out of hate, yet I have achieved nothing with all my love and patience.
“You, you, you! It is all because of you. Bria will die, and although it kills me, I know I must grant her last wish. She has kept all the promises and agreements she ever made.”
He pauses as my eyes widen in apprehension. Somehow during this night, I have realized his threats are anything but empty.
“I made you a promise when we started this conversation, and I intend to keep it. Do you know what she did when we left the welcome-home gathering? She said she needed some time alone, and I followed her. She went to a tattoo shop. Any idea what she chose for a tattoo and where she put it?” I tip my glass and let the alcohol draw out my answer. “Between her breasts, a tattoo tells a story about everything that went wrong. It is an image of two barn owls forming a heart, one with blue eyes and the other with hazel eyes, and enclosing it are two words. Can you guess what the words are?”
“Forever us.”
Alexander’s body goes rigid as he realizes there’s only one way to know this. I saw it. He balls his fists at his side while I breathe through the pain ripping my heart in two. “Right, forever us.” His voice cracks with his answer. “I was mad at her because I thought she was acting crazy, and I tried to restrain her. Do you know what she said?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“I asked her why and told her I didn’t understand.
“She said, ‘So I know what we once had was real. When my mind breaks, when my heart abandons me, when the memories are long gone, I want to see this image in the mirror and hear it whisper what Damien and I once felt was real.’
“The reason I’ve tried so hard to save her is . . . how on earth can a person with no feelings act like she did every time you got to her? I can accept she’s incapable of feeling and reacting generally, but she behaves like she feels everything and all at once when it comes to you. She acts like a person who’s broken-hearted and never overcame it.”
DAMIEN
I almost confess I had the privilege to see the traces of her tattoo last year, but it concerns only Bria and me. It’s personal and intimate before I tarnished it anyway. The guilt still gnaws at my insides. I could have saved her from herself one year ago if I wasn’t blinded by selfishness and hurt, but I didn’t. Instead, I shoved her further down a path of no return. My fists dig into my temples in an attempt for physical harm and maybe a lobotomy. There is no excuse for what I did and said to her.
I could take my shirt off and show him the same tattoo displayed over my heart. Only Bria and I can be chained together without being physically together. I got my tattoo to never forget that what we had was true. Both Bria and I had craved our forever since we spoke our first words. After we lost it, we may regain a piece of us when we stare back at what is inked over our hearts. I must have lost my mind during this conversation because I catch myself smiling, accepting Bria is deep-rooted inside me. I can’t erase her from my mind and heart. I can lie, but once in a while, I do the decent thing for myself and admit that this is my ultimate truth.
No one can understand our love for each other—not even us. Everyone should be excused from the devastation a great love can leave behind. You give your all to one person, granting total power. Is the risk worth it? The answer is yes. It is tattooed on my skin, unaffected by the passage of unforgiving time. If not for Bria, I would never have known what it felt like to be on top of the universe, connected to absolution, bathed in divinity, and carried by wholeness.
I could grasp Alexander’s infatuation with Bria behind his scorching eyes whenever he speaks of her. He’s put her on a pedestal where he could look at her but never touch. Unrequited love is not love because love needs two hearts to claim it and become enslaved to its feeling. Everything else is a mere unfulfilled desire and material for improbable scenarios.
Without looking at me, he drums a finger on the polished bar. “She became a workaholic and desperate in her attempts to regain at least your respect back, your trust in her work ethic. Bria craved it more than her next breath, although I’m not sure she wanted her next breath more than regaining your trust. Can you remember how you’ve challenged her, the numerous extra hours she had to work so you would have the satisfaction of having control over her? She developed plans for not just one store opening in a month, but twenty, per your request. The amount of work she had to do in such a short time was brutal. From the beginning, you set her to fail, but then again, it was the only way to prove to you how amazing she is.
“For four years, you’ve treated her not as your equal, but as your personal donkey. Lately, though, you’ve adjusted your strategy, haven’t you? You couldn’t get to her with these demands, could you? Do you realize you have given her what she wished for? Hasn’t she always had control by stroking and blinding your ego to give you the false impression you had it? Of course, you won because that’s what she always wanted . . . for you to win.”
I flash back to those times as if it were yesterday. In the beginning, I didn’t trust her, not at all. I had entrusted her with my heart, and where had that gotten me? I couldn’t risk expecting her to be trustworthy again with the only other thing I was living for. I had to test her, know her level, what she could do, and what would make her break. I was rendered speechless fast as she managed everything I cast at her. I ordered her to come up with plans for our rapid expansion in a few days. No sane or normal person could have handled it, but she and her chosen team succeeded, so we expanded into fifteen different countries, adding one thousand seven hundred thirty-five branches in the last four years
. Quite ridiculous how we communicated only through our assistants. Poor Luisa and Emma, two innocent people caught in the middle of our mutual challenge.
After a few months, I knew this woman could do my work and everyone else’s in a heartbeat. But I couldn’t admit it, so I kept forcing her to do more. I expected, at some point, she would break. Any other person would have, but not Bria. After a while, something unbelievable happened. She pressed me back, and my team had to negotiate harder contracts creating a better competitive landscape. I was constantly in search of new markets and development. I worked due to her challenges more productively and with even more determination than in the past. We took the next step and entered the online market and implemented a grocery delivery service. She made me a better CEO for the people who work for us, more available and attentive. I created a more familial atmosphere. Our employees could choose how their workplaces should look, ordering ergonomic chairs for both offices and shops and implementing a daycare center for our employees’ children. I began to take into consideration their opinions on how to improve the internal and external aspects of M&S.
Regarding work accomplishments, Bria and I have been the perfect team. We wrote history when it came to the business’s achievements being unstoppable in our pursuit of greatness. Our earnings rose to $75 billion yearly. We breathed for the high of a new success but never celebrated it together. We’ve challenged each other every day to the point of exhaustion, but neither of us ever gave the other one this impression. She gained my respect and trust, which she wished for, and what did I achieve in return? Nothing, because she isn’t mine anymore. Knowing we could have had everything both in private and at work slices me. Sometimes, nostalgia crashed into me, and like a fool, I would daydream about us, about how we could have had everything, both in private and at work. These thoughts cut deep because people assumed I had everything. And I did, on the outside. Well, everything except the love of my life at my side. Nothing could compare in worth.
Her hard work gave me no option but to trust her, even respect her work ethic, but I’ve made a promise.
I observe people whenever they are engrossed and unaware of being watched. They let their masks slip for a few seconds, and in those seconds, I always get my answers. This is how I found out nothing could bring Bria to her knees through work because work seemed to be cathartic for her. But on the few occasions we saw each other, when I had the latest supermodel or actress at my side, Bria gave me what I was desperate to gain—a reaction. She started showing up with that Alexander at her side, so pardon me if I didn’t give a fuck how my numerous affairs would be perceived.
I have had one purpose and only one—her downfall, her at my feet, begging for forgiveness. It began when Chloe, my friend, came to visit from abroad, and I invited her to our parents’ annual Christmas party. She presented the perfect solution for my plan because I glimpsed the pained look in Bria’s eyes. After that, my chosen game has been to invite the most beautiful woman I know to be my date for the night. Not even what we have achieved with the company has filled me with as much satisfaction as her fleeting response every time we met.
The look in her eyes switched from pain to consent and forgiveness over time. As if I had somehow made the mistake of my life by cheating on her. But leave it to Bria to still find a way to guilt-trip me. It is my life, and I could be with and fuck anyone I want. And yet, her display of innocence had me simmering with rage because her boyfriend was always at her side. So why the beaten glances, then?
The women came and went, but nothing did the trick. I pondered what would be sure to make Bria crumble. I had my answer the moment I caught her gazing at her family with something resembling remorse, guilt, and a glimpse of hidden yearning and had my answer. The only person who could help me was her cousin, Monica, so I formed a plan to put Bria in the hole she deserves—alone and shattered.
Using Monica as a tool for my vengeance made everything easy. I read you like an open book, Bria. You should have fought. But I would have won either way as I had gained some strong friends in your absence—patience and observation. Don’t be mad about losing. You never had a winning chance, my love.
I catch myself talking in my head for the umpteenth time this evening and blink to ground me to the here and now. I detect Alexander’s stare in the corner of my eye. For a while we would indulge in some silent reprieve.
DAMIEN
We remain alone in the bar. I believe the bartender had enough of our display of emotions. We are both sprawled on the barstools, gazing at nothing in particular—like two buddies out for the night. I recoil at the visual. Alexander scrubs a hand down his chin before he resumes talking, almost laughing at what I assume is the irony of how he’s spoken so openly about his life to the person he can stand the least.
“You have been persistent in your pursuit of revenge, and still, most of your attempts proved futile. Not the enormous and agonizing tasks you gave her and not even the parade of women you brought helped your cause. All you gained were some fleeting reactions out of her. Your master plan wasn’t working until Bria’s twenty-fourth birthday when you arrived hand in hand with Monica and introduced her as your girlfriend. The du Monts and du Skys had organized a family day to celebrate. It should have been carefree if you could ignore the same hopeful looks from her parents, the same sad expression in Filip’s eyes, and the same questioning one on Sophia’s face. Her parents searched for the girl she had ceased to be, the familiar one but never tried to get to know the one she became. She hid behind fake smiles. Bria was always there for them when she had to be, even though she would have preferred to work or stay at home locked in her mind.
“As dutiful parents, they accepted the family-only birthday non-party. But your arrival stole the show. It was like a cheap slow-motion movie as you rendered everyone speechless. You plopped on a seat and appeared to be glowing with happiness over your newfound love for Monica. I couldn’t believe how low you’d sunk.
“Being warm outside, your people placed the table on the back porch, overlooking the lake, everything festive yet intimate. I recall Bria didn’t seem so lost in her mind and forlorn as usual. It would happen occasionally, but I learned those sudden and short-lived moments wouldn’t last. It never did. The instant she saw you with her cousin at your side, it flew away, setting a record for how soon her mood could shift. She clasped my hand, her face paling but by the time you reached us she went poker-faced, hiding the battle raging inside her. I had a distinct feeling that unless I held her, she would crumble. But you, being the blind and enraged jerk you are, you had to shove and crush her further. I still recollect the satisfaction and smirk plastered on your face.”
My jaw twitches while I watch Alexander rein himself in not to punch me.
“‘Hello, family,’ you cheered. Then, you added, ‘Bria, Alexander’ cutting her from the family. I’m sure you beat your chest when you glimpsed the flicker of pain flash in her eyes. It was the fuel you needed to keep going on.
“You wished her a happy birthday, with all the fake sweetness you could conjure. Bria only murmured a thank you.
“Then you put your hands on Monica’s shoulders and leaned in as if whispering to her like a love-struck teenager. She blossomed under your attention and caresses. Meanwhile, our mouths all hung open. Rebecca was the first to regain her composure and find her words.
“You had been waiting for the perfect moment to reveal your good fortune, and your mother offered it to you.
“As you regaled us about how you and Monica embraced your mutual feelings, Bria grappled for her next breath.”
My breath shakes, and I wince as he adds, “Your mother again spoke first. ‘If you two are happy, so are we, but it never occurred to us you might have feelings for each other.’
“You poured it on thick, saying Monica’s beauty, brain and goodness had made you fall in love with her. Worse, you said, ‘Just look at her!’ and went on about how adorable she was. And then you cupped her face as she squeale
d and pecked her on the corner of her mouth. Your words and flaunting of affection stabbed Bria in the chest, and it was exactly what you were after. You elevated one woman whose eyes lit up and shone with delight and hacked at the other.
“Katherine beamed when gazing at you and her niece. Everyone bobbed their heads except for Sophia and Filip. They exchanged glances. Disbelief etched on their ashen faces as if they were in the wrong place and didn’t know how to disappear sooner. Your actions reeked of desperation, Damien, and like every desperate man, you went too far.
“But your master plan had a flaw in it because you couldn’t keep Monica from piercing Bria even more. You were so engrossed in your bitterness you couldn’t stand it if someone besides you upset her.
“Sophia rested her cheek on her elbow on the table and poked, ‘So, when exactly did you two discover these feelings for each other?’ It was the first time someone in your family gained my limited respect. Her tongue dripped with mockery, and her eyes burned with ire.
“And then Monica interrupted you to answer Sophia and deliver a low blow. Remember? She said something like, ‘Damien and I have had a thing for each other since we were little, but it was not the right time for us to delve into it. We’ve waited patiently for our time to come, and now we have agreed to embrace the feelings we have for each other.’
“Your parents raised their brows right at that moment. It was clear they had a problem with what she had said, which was hurtful to Bria and inconsiderate to them on her behalf while Monica stuck her nose in the air. Their eyes on Bria shone with enough love and sympathy to melt an iceberg, acknowledging maybe for the first time you two shared a past. Filip spurted at his cousin’s words, and Sophia passed him a tissue.
Shattered Love : A Billionaire Romance (Forever Us Book 1) Page 9
