“Vincent’s welcome, too. There’s plenty of room.”
She squeals, and her voice blurs into white noise as I smile and nod at appropriate intervals.
A yacht holiday. Weeks trapped on a boat with Chelsea being the good son, the obedient heir, the perfect accessory to make this deal more palatable.
I need air.
I extract my hand from Chelsea’s. “I’m just going outside for a moment.”
Her smile falters. “But they’re clearing a dance floor. Don’t you want to—”
“I’ll be back.” Already moving towards the French doors.
I bypass the terrace where guests cluster, wanting distance from all of it.
The native forest behind the house begins where the manicured lawn ends. The party noises drop away, replaced by rustling undergrowth, the soft whisper of wind through leaves.
It’s cooler here, each breath rich with the scent of decaying vegetation, and the crisp woody aroma of silver ferns.
My mother would spend hours back here before she died.
I told Ophelia she didn’t like me and it felt true at the time. It’s just in the days since I’ve become confused because every memory is of her smiling. Hugging me. Being the only person who treated me as more than an heir to a fortune.
She had green eyes that twinkled less with every passing day. She’d read to me before bed, saying the house was too quiet and books filled the silence better than our own thoughts.
I lean against a tree trunk, the bark rough against my shoulder.
Another memory surfaces, sharper than the others. I had started school but only just, maybe five or six, wandering the hallways when I should have been asleep.
The mansion had been full of guests for one of my father’s parties, many staying overnight or for the weekend, much like tonight. I’d been thirsty, heading downstairs for water, when I saw my mother leave a guest bedroom on the second floor.
Her hair was dishevelled, her dress slightly askew. Her face was strained in the dim hallway light, so pale she looked like a ghost.
And there was blood.
Not much. Just a thin trickle running down her inner thigh, dark against her skin.
I’d stopped, frozen in the hallway, watching her. She’d turned, and something in her expression cracked. Shame, maybe. Or resignation.
“Go back to bed, Damien,” she’d said, her voice sharper than I’d ever heard it.
“Mum, are you—”
“Back to bed!”
I didn’t always obey her, but I obeyed her then. For hours afterwards, I’d lain awake, trying to make sense of what I’d seen.
I understand it now.
My father had offered her to a business associate like a party favour. Using her as a tool to gain advantage, not a person.
The same way he’s using me with Chelsea.
The information feels new, but it’s not. Not really. I’ve known it for years, felt it in the way my father parades me at these events, and orchestrates my life around his business interests. But standing in the forest my mother loved, remembering the blood and her broken expression, the knowledge sits differently in my chest.
“Damien?”
Chelsea’s voice cuts through the darkness. I hear her footsteps on the trail behind me, hesitant but determined.
