Damian ended the call and turned back toward Elena, who remained kneeling on the marble floor amid the scattered cleaning supplies, tears still streaming down her face as she absorbed the rapid, devastating unraveling of Vivienne's carefully constructed deception unfolding in real time around her.
He crouched beside her once more, this time reaching out fully, gently cupping her face between his gloved hands with a tenderness entirely at odds with the coldness he'd just directed at Vivienne moments before.
"Three years," he said quietly, his voice thick with an emotion he made no effort now to hide. "Three years I searched for you, and she had you working in the back rooms of my own house, kept just far enough away that I'd never notice."
Elena looked up at him, tears still falling freely, the exhausted resignation she'd carried for months finally beginning to loosen beneath the weight of his unwavering attention. "I didn't know," she whispered. "I promise you, Damian, I had no idea this was your home."
He drew her gently to her feet, away from the spilled liquid and abandoned cleaning cloth, away from Vivienne's stunned, silent presence still frozen on the staircase behind them. Whatever reckoning was still to come — for Vivienne, for the household that had kept Elena hidden, for the three lost years neither of them could reclaim — it would begin now, with Elena finally standing instead of kneeling, and Damian finally holding what he'd spent three years searching for.
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