Chapter 3The Velvet Trap

After giving Damian the divorce papers, I quit my job to focus on my health.

While packing, I found a box of old trophies, gathering dust. If not for these tarnished awards, I might have forgotten the brilliant youth I once had.

My grandfather was an internationally renowned watercolorist. I started learning from him at three, showing a natural talent. Many called me a rising star, the heir to his legacy.

But now, my right hand can barely hold a paintbrush.

The year I graduated high school, at eighteen, Sienna and her friends cornered me in the girls' bathroom. She shattered my right hand with a baseball bat. For years after, even peeling an apple was a struggle.

Damian came to see me, his face etched with exhaustion. "The Thornes and the Vances are at war over this. Sienna is a wreck, she regrets it, she's in pain every day. Claire, can't you just let it go? Drop the charges."

I looked up at his beautiful, troubled face, tears blurring my vision. "So this is the price of loving you, Damian? If it were Sienna lying in this hospital bed today, would you be asking her to just let it go?"

He was silent for a long time before he finally whispered, "Claire… I'm sorry."

In the end, Sienna was sent abroad, and in everyone's eyes, the matter was closed. She thrived overseas, living her life as the same proud princess she'd always been.

And I, forced to withdraw from the art world, vanished amidst a chorus of ful sighs.

I polished each of those trophies until they gleamed, then put them carefully away.

At six that evening, Damian picked me up for dinner at the estate. It was a Saturday ritual—if we were in town, we’d have dinner with Grandma Eleanor.

As I settled into the passenger seat, I was hit by a wave of perfume. Gardenia. Sienna's favorite. It hadn't changed in all these years.

I opened the window, letting the crisp, desolate autumn air rush in.

At a red light, Damian's fingers drummed restlessly on the steering wheel, a clear sign of his agitation. I knew he was waiting for me to speak, waiting for me to surrender. He was so used to me placating him.

When he was a rebellious teen, racing his car on winding mountain roads, I was the one in the passenger seat, staying with him until he'd had his fill of madness. When his father's anger left bruises on his back, I was the one who crept into his room late at night to apply ointment and coax him to eat. When he was fighting with his family to start his own company, working himself to the bone, I was the one who brought him every meal. When he threw a tantrum and went drinking, calling me but saying nothing, I was the one who took a cab to the bar in the middle of the night to bring him home.

When I was too busy with work to dote on him, he’d contact Sienna just to get a reaction out of me.

The perfume in the car today was just another warning shot. A declaration of war. You’re the one who’s desperate for my love, Claire. If you don't hold on tight, I can leave at any moment.

It was a tactic that had never failed him before. Whenever he reached out to Sienna, I would panic and cling to him even tighter.

"Damian, we need to find time to get the divorce certificate," I said, my voice calm and even. "And you can tell Sienna she doesn't need to send me photos anymore. You're free."

His brow furrowed into a tight knot. "What did she send you?"

I forwarded him the pictures.

He scrolled through them, and then his anger flared. "Claire, your tolerance is truly something else. I was in the States for three months, I called you, and you didn't say a single word about this. I was lying in her lap, and you didn't care? Do you even have a heart? Do you even love me?"

His chest heaved with suppressed emotion. He pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out, and smoked a cigarette in tense silence.

When he got back in, he thrust his phone at me. On the screen was a blurry, pixelated photo. His voice was laced with a pain he couldn't hide. "Claire, what have I been to you all these years? Huh? A replacement? A stand-in for Caleb Thorne?"

In the photo, I was young, my hair in a high ponytail, wearing a school uniform, my cheeks flushed. Beside me, a boy with a radiant, sunny smile. His hand, hidden behind his back, was gripping my wrist tightly.

In the springtime of my sixteenth year, I had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a boy, bathed in sunlight, the gentle breeze on our faces.