CHAPTER 156: SOUL TIE

—Damon—

I couldn’t sleep all night. Maybe it was that stupid argument about love that kept my blood hot. She lies beside me now, quiet and fragile—my wife—while the part of me that’s supposed to rest grinds like an engine with no off switch. Her head still aches. She’s refused stronger painkillers because of the baby, stubbornness, and a little martyrdom. Paracetamol is all she allows, a scrap of relief that barely touches the edges of it.

I watched her breathe, shallow, steady, as if sleep could stitch up the places that are torn inside me. How can she tell me not to love her and then sleep like nothing happened? How do her words have the cruelty of a knife and the softness of a lullaby at once? She is killing me softly, and I would let her—again, and again.

I kept my hands to myself. I told myself she was injured. I told myself I hadn’t spoken to the doctor. I shoved a pillow between us like it could keep me honest. I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything else—counting sheep, reciting business figures, inventory of every watch I own—anything but her. It didn’t work. My body is traitorous: every memory of her is an ignition.

I must have drifted, half-asleep, because then I woke with my hands where they always wander. Left hand slipped inside her panties, right hand cupping the familiar, heavy softness of her breast. Cold reality snapped into place with her sharp little hiss.

"Damon!"

I pulled back like someone caught committing a sin and a sacrament at once. I smoothed the sheet, tucked her in, and replaced the pillow that had disappeared. Her hair smelled like the lotion she always uses and something faintly of smoke from the candle I light at night for our nightly lovemaking—a scent that locates me in the center of her. My body throbbed in protest.

"Were you asleep while touching me?" she asked, voice hushed as she sat up. There was no accusation—only the weary patience that makes me want to break the world.

"Yes," I breathed. "I’m sorry. I’m used to it. We make love before sleep, in sleep, in the morning. It’s how I know you’re mine."

It’s our pattern: half-conscious thrusts, a straddle, a ride until she collapses, forehead on my chest. That intimacy—brutal and tender—has mapped itself into me. I cannot unlearn how she fits.

The wall clock—mother’s ridiculous sun and moon, the luminous hands that turn into a star-swept face at night—caught my eye. The Big Dipper is outlined in the faint glow. Three o’clock. Too early to be up. Too late to pretend moderation. I couldn’t touch her again tonight—not carelessly. Not while she was hurt. Not while she was fragile.

I pulled on workout clothes like armor, kissed the hollow of her forehead, and left. Leaving is a lie; half of my brain stayed with her. Half of me is hers by design; one quarter is animal hunger; the last quarter is for business and whatever else keeps the house from burning. She owns more than half of me, and the rest I surrender to the world for her sake.

At the gym, I punished myself until my muscles trembled. I ran hard, loud music in my ears—beats like a metronome for the fury in my chest—but even the kilometers couldn’t run me free of her.

"Can’t sleep?" My father’s voice, dry amusement. He climbed onto the treadmill beside me.

"Apparently, I keep forgetting my wife is pregnant and injured," I said.

He laughed. "You never stopped loving your first love."

"How could I? She’s a goddess." I spat the word like a prayer and a threat, both.

He studied me carefully. "How will you handle the mastermind?"

"I’ll let her decide," I said, and meant nothing by it except I’d follow her will. "If it were up to me... torture first, slow enough to be art. End it clean only when they deserve it."

"As expected," he said. "But Livana—if she chooses—she’ll finish it in a way you’d admire and never foresee. Calm on the surface. A blade beneath."

I smiled because the image pleased me. "Good. I want to watch."

Three hours later, I returned. The bathroom light was on. She stood at the sink, one hand braced on porcelain, water running warm and careless between her fingers.

"Babe?" I asked.

"I just feel a little sick." Her voice was small.

I moved to kiss her, and she put a hand on my chest—soft but firm. "No. Take a bath first."

I obeyed like a soldier. Water. Heat. The momentary anonymity of steam. I was nearly done when I heard her retch into the sink. I was out of the shower before the last droplets had fallen, towel at my hips, fury at my ribs. She raised a hand to keep me away; she rinsed, then shooed me like I was a nuisance.

"Babe~" I said, the nickname coming out with something too loose and too sharp.

"It’s just morning sickness," she mumbled. Just. The word tasted wrong to me—minimizing, false. There is nothing small about what she carries.

I turned the showers on full, steam, noise, and water like a curtain. I wrapped a towel low and another over my head and came to her. My hands found her waist and moved in slow circles, pressing, holding, making heat where she shivered. The sight of her reduced me—my goddess made human—and I wanted to obliterate anything that harmed her. If the world dared to wound her again, I would make that world regret its breath.

I kissed her cheek, hard enough to leave the memory of me on her skin. I held her close, possessive and soft at once. Dangerous. Devoted. Mine.

If anyone or anything tries to cross her, they will find there is a man who keeps the darkness ready—patient, precise, inevitable. I am his keeper.

—Livana—

The soup reached me like a warm note—no Michelin flourish, but honest and steady, the kind of flavor that remembers the hands that made it. My husband hovered, proud as a child with a secret. I expected blandness; instead, it was balanced, gentle.

"How is it?" he asked, eager, like a puppy waiting for praise.

"It’s good," I said, and his grin lit like a small, private sun. He fed me another spoonful, cautious and reverent. Chef Wally laid out the rest of breakfast like a quiet little ceremony—wholesome, measured.

" I never expected Damon to cook the soup," Mother said, settling into the table with the practiced politeness of family ritual.

"Anything for my wife," Damon answered, voice bright with triumph.

This morning we had everyone: the table full, voices threading through one another. Amiliee proclaimed it the first time the whole family sat together in ages. For a moment, the room felt like a painting—ordered, familiar. It should have been lovely. Instead, the colors bruised a little when I remembered.

I remember exactly where Father used to sit and how he smiled at Mother. The memory curdled quickly. I saw instead the other scene, the one I keep in a locked drawer: my father, careless and greedy, bending over my aunt as if the world owed him something. After that, the ritual of family breakfast became a stage for a play I refused to watch. I stopped joining them. I fled to the little café across from school, spending mornings there, stomach a tight knot, plotting small, patient ways to make things undo themselves.

Damon discovered my habit sooner than I liked. He began coming early too, choosing a table a discreet distance away—an almost-clumsy attempt at respect, though I called it stalking in my head. Still, even his silence has a gravity. The simple fact of his being nearby steadies something inside me, a small, improbable comfort I did not anticipate.

He found my hand on the curve of my belly and laid his over it as if anchoring us both. "You need to eat more, love," he whispered. I pressed my lips together and kept my gaze straight but unfocused—the practiced blindness that shapes my life. I let my eyes be curtains drawn. I read the world by scent and sound, by the heat of a palm, the timbre of a voice.

I do not want to love Damon. I tell myself that as often as I breathe. Loving him would be dangerous—an invitation to lose the careful architecture I have built around myself. And yet I fear something else: that if I surrender, he will one day step back, tired of the expense of me. Perhaps part of me is fond of the selfish geometry of this—of receiving affection like a collector receives rare glass, admired but not always returned. Maybe I like the idea of being loved without the obligation to love back.

Still, when his hand rests on the small life growing under my ribs, the calculus gets complicated. The future rearranges itself in the softest ways—shifts I did not plan for, and cannot entirely refuse. My heart annotates these changes quietly, like a margin note. I will decide when and how the world bends. For now, I listen to the rhythm of his breath and the steady clink of spoons, and I choose to be patient, measured, vigilant—always calculating, always graceful, always a little blind.