The house was quiet after the guards took Luca away. Damian stood at the window of his study, watching the trees sway in the evening wind, a glass of whiskey warm in his hand. Behind him, through the wall, he could sense Jace in the bedroom sitting exactly where he'd been told to sit, waiting exactly as he'd been trained to wait.
Perfect obedience. Finally.
He should have felt satisfied. Victorious. He'd broken the stubborn, fiery boy who'd dared to humiliate him in public, reshaped him into something pliable and beautiful. The Terms of Obedience were being followed to the letter. Jace said "Master" now without prompting, knelt without being told, performed without hesitation.
It was everything he'd wanted.
So why did it feel so hollow?
Damian took a long sip of whiskey, letting the burn distract him from the unfamiliar ache in his chest. He was not a man given to introspection introspection was for the weak, for those who needed to justify their actions to themselves. He acted. He conquered. He owned. That was the law he lived by.
But lately, the law felt... insufficient.
He thought of Jace's face during Luca's visit. The blank, beautiful mask. The empty eyes reciting those rehearsed words. "I belong to Damian. I am his possession." It was exactly what he'd demanded. Exactly what he'd beaten and manipulated and conditioned Jace to say.
And it had made him want to break something.
Not Jace he'd already done that. Luca, maybe. Or himself. Or the world that had made this necessary.
He set down the whiskey and walked to the bedroom, pushing the door open without knocking. Jace was exactly where he'd left him, sitting on the edge of the bed, hands folded in his lap, eyes downcast. The picture of submission.
"Look at me," Damian said.
Jace's eyes rose. They were beautiful eyes dark, expressive, once full of fire. Now they were still lakes, reflecting light without producing any of their own.
Damian crossed to him, tilting his chin up with one finger. "How do you feel?"
The question seemed to startle Jace. He blinked, confusion flickering across his features before smoothing back into compliance. "I feel... fine, Master."
"Fine." Damian repeated the word flatly. "You watched your best friend be dragged away in chains, and you feel fine."
Jace's throat worked. "I feel what you want me to feel, Master."
The answer was perfect. Obedient. Everything Damian had engineered.
It made him want to put his fist through a wall.
He released Jace's chin and stepped back, running a hand through his hair. This was wrong. Not Jace's response that was exactly right. It was him. Something in him was wrong, was misfiring, was wanting things he couldn't name.
He had wanted to own Jace completely. He had achieved that. So why did he now want... more? Why did he want the fire back, even if it meant the fire burned him?
He thought of the early days, before the gala, before the punishment. The way Jace's eyes would flash with defiance even as his body yielded. The way he'd bite back insults even as he moaned under Damian's touch. The way he'd been a person, not this beautiful, hollow doll.
Damian had told himself he was breaking Jace for revenge, for control, for the satisfaction of conquering something wild. But looking at the empty-eyed creature on his bed, he realized the truth:
He hadn't wanted to break Jace.
He'd wanted Jace to choose him. Freely. Willingly. With those dark eyes blazing and that sharp tongue cursing his name even as hands pulled him closer.
He'd wanted to be loved. Or wanted. Or something that couldn't be forced.
The realization was a blade between his ribs.
"I'm going out," he said abruptly, turning toward the door. "The guards will watch you. Don't move from this room."
"Yes, Master."
The words followed him out, perfect and hollow, and Damian wanted to scream.
He drove without destination, the city lights blurring past. His mind was a chaos of images Jace laughing at something stupid, Jace throwing that plate, Jace gasping beneath him in the early days when the pleasure was still tangled with resistance. He remembered the first time Jace had moaned his name unprompted, the way his heart had stuttered at the sound.
He'd told himself it was possession. Ownership. The satisfaction of a collector.
But collectors didn't feel this hollow ache when their acquisitions stopped fighting. Collectors didn't crave the very defiance they'd worked to extinguish.
He ended up at Luca's apartment not the one Luca currently occupied that was a cell, but his old place, the one he'd rented before everything fell apart. The landlord hadn't re-rented it yet. Damian had keys to everything.
He let himself in and stood in the dark, dusty space, surrounded by the ghosts of his cousin's pathetic, hopeful life. Photos on the wall Jace and Luca at the beach, Jace and Luca at a concert, Jace and Luca being young and stupid and alive. In every photo, Jace was grinning, his arm slung around Luca's shoulders, his eyes bright with something Damian had never seen directed at himself.
Trust, affection, Love.
Damian picked up a framed photo from the dusty coffee table. Jace and Luca, maybe nineteen, covered in paint from some awful DIY project, laughing so hard they were bent over. It was genuine. Real. Everything Damian's world was not.
He stared at Jace's laughing face and felt something crack inside him.
He had spent months breaking this boy, molding him, reshaping him into the perfect possession. And now, standing in his cousin's abandoned apartment surrounded by evidence of a love he could never replicate, Damian understood the truth he'd been avoiding:
He didn't just want to own Jace.
He wanted Jace to love him.
And love, unlike everything else in his empire, could not be bought, beaten, or coerced. It could only be given. Freely. Willingly. By someone who had a choice.
He had systematically destroyed Jace's ability to choose. And in doing so, he had destroyed any chance of ever getting what he truly wanted.
The photo frame creaked in his grip. He set it down carefully, afraid of what he might do if he held it any longer.
What have I done?
The question was unfamiliar, unwelcome. He was Damian Moreau. He didn't question his actions. He acted.
But as he stood in the dark, surrounded by ghosts of a happiness he could never manufacture, the question echoed.
He had won. Completely, totally, irrevocably won.
And winning felt exactly like losing.
He drove back to the house in silence. The guards nodded as he passed. He climbed the stairs to the bedroom and found Jace exactly where he'd left him, still sitting on the edge of the bed, still staring at nothing.
Damian crossed to him and knelt actually knelt in front of him. He took Jace's cold hands in his own.
"Jace."
Those empty eyes lifted to his.
Damian searched for words, for some way to bridge the chasm he'd created. But what could he say? I'm sorry I broke you? I want the real you back? I need you to love me?
All of it was selfish. All of it was about him.
He settled for the only truth he could articulate: "I don't know what I'm doing."
Jace blinked, a flicker of something surprise? confusion? crossing his features. "Master?"
"Don't call me that." The words came out harsh, and Jace flinched. Damian gentled his voice. "Not tonight. Just... don't."
Jace stared at him, uncomprehending. The conditioning was too deep, the damage too complete. He didn't know how to be anything but what Damian had made him.
Damian released his hands and stood. He walked to the window, looking out at the dark trees.
"Sleep," he said, his back turned. "I'll be in the study if you need me."
He left without looking back. He couldn't bear to see those empty eyes one more time.
In the study, he poured another whiskey and stared at nothing. Somewhere in this house, Luca was in a cell, paying for a love he'd been too cowardly to claim. Somewhere upstairs, Jace was in a gilded cage, paying for Damian's inability to understand the difference between ownership and love.
And Damian sat alone, a king on a throne of his own making, surrounded by everything he'd ever wanted and nothing he truly needed.
The whiskey burned going down. It was the only thing that still felt real.