Chapter 59 – Ivy’s Deep Thoughts (Ivy’s POV)

Chapter 59 – Ivy’s Deep Thoughts (Ivy’s POV)
I spent the rest of that awful morning avoiding Damian like the plague. The moment I saw Bianca with that sweet little boy on her hip, something inside my chest simply… closed off. Shattered and then froze over, all in an instant.

I didn’t stick around to watch the rest of the spectacle. I couldn’t. If I’d heard one more word, I might have screamed or burst into hysterical laughter or collapsed right there on the foyer tiles. Instead, I turned and walked away as calmly as I could, up the stairs, down the hall, all the way to the small office that Damian set up for me last week.

Now I sat in that office, door locked, staring blankly at a ledger on my desk. Not seeing the neat rows of numbers at all, just replaying that scene at the gate on an endless loop. Bianca was here. With a child. A child she claimed was Damian’s. I had heard them. I had listened and heard all of it.

But what the fuck was this coincidence? My own cousin I had not seen in what? Ten? Fifteen years? And suddenly, our meeting again was to share the same man? Wait… what was this?

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing the heels of my hands against them until I saw sparks. I wouldn’t cry. I refused to cry. I’d already cried too many tears in my life recently... For my father and his blurry past, for my mother I never met, for my brother who disappeared never to return, for the many victims of crimes who I had sworn to spend my life avenging the day I became a detective, and now, for the life that has been stolen away from me the day Damian walked in from nowhere and kidnapped me in the bar.

Come to think of it… All these is meant to make no sense since the life I really wanted to ever live is far away from this mafia lord of werewolves anyway…

A knock came at the door, startling me and breaking my trail of thoughts. I already knew who it was. I stiffened in my chair.

“Ivy? Ivy, please… let’s talk,” came Damian’s muffled plea from the other side of the door.

His voice was raw with emotion I wouldn’t let myself trust. I stared hard at the ledger, willing myself to feel nothing.

There was a long pause. Then, more softly: “I swear I didn’t know, Ivy. I just found out. Open the door, please, love.”

Love. The endearment almost undid me. Almost. But then I remembered the sight of him looking down at that boy. I remembered how he didn’t immediately deny paternity, how he ran off to deal with Bianca instead of chasing after me. The knife of betrayal twisted deeper. Goodness, why did this even hurt? Fuck!

I remained silent. What was there to say? If I opened that door, I’d either dissolve into tears or start throwing things. Possibly both. Neither would help me hold onto my pride.

On the other side, I heard Damian exhale shakily. “Ivy,” he whispered, voice right up against the wood now, “I’m sorry.”

For a moment, I wavered. I pictured him leaning there, likely raking a hand through his hair like he did when he was desperate. Some sick part of me wanted to open the door just to see him brought low. To see guilt and fear on that handsome face, evidence that he hurt too.

The silence that followed was heavy. I sensed Damian still right outside, unsure whether to stay or go.

My pride asserted itself with brutal clarity. I wouldn’t do this—wouldn’t fall apart in front of him, wouldn’t beg him to pick me over his supposed child. If he was half the man I’d hoped he was becoming, it should have been no choice at all. He should have been down on his knees promising me the sun, moon, and stars that none of this meant anything, that I was all that mattered.

He wasn’t on his knees. He was standing outside a locked door, apologizing, while my cousin and a little boy likely bearing his DNA wandered freely through the halls of my would-be home. And he put them there. The bitter taste of that knowledge coated my tongue like ash.

Wait, Ivy!

I tried to call myself back to my senses. This was Damian Lucenti we were talking about. He meant nothing to me. I mean, if anything at all, I was meant to at least, be pretending to care that all these was actually happening and act like it did hurt in a bid to convince Damian I was falling for him, but no… I couldn’t pretend. I didn’t need to pretend. It did hurt! And I couldn’t freaking tell why!

Slowly, I rose and walked to the door. I rested my palm flat against the cool wood, knowing he was mirrored on the other side. For a second, I allowed myself a whisper of indulgence: imagining sliding the bolt free, opening up, letting him wrap me in his arms and spin some sweet lie that this would all be okay.

But then what? I’d be expected to what—help him raise that child? Play stepmother to Bianca’s son? Watch as the pack lined up to congratulate the Alpha on producing an heir, however unconventionally, while I stood to the side, irrelevant and humiliated? My stomach churned.

No. I wouldn’t live like that. I’d survived too much to settle for a life of quiet misery.

“Then I’ll find my own way out,” I whispered, so softly I wasn’t sure even I heard it. It’s an echo of what formed in my mind the moment I saw Bianca and Angelo: an exit strategy. If Damian couldn’t choose me, fully and unequivocally, I’d choose myself. Even if it meant leaving him and this cursed bond behind for good.

After all, that was the plan from the beginning – to draw Damian close, caress his dick and feed his ego until he was convinced I was on his side… and then when he least expected it…

I was gone!