Chapter 241: The Devil's Family's Guilt

Had Damian destroyed Anastasia long before she ever set foot in Pennsylvania?

Damian’s jaw tightened until the bone burned.

Slowly, his bandaged hand lifted.

The ruthless, untouchable titan of Manhattan… a man who bought and sold lives with a single signature… reached out with a touch so gentle it terrified him.

His rough, wrapped fingers brushed a stray lock of dark hair away from her pale cheek, tucking it behind her ear.

He had fled from a rain-slicked highway because he couldn’t bear the thought that his own cruelty, his own pride, and his own silence had driven her to bleed alone in the dark.

Suddenly, Ana stirred in her sleep.

A soft, troubled whimper slipped past her swollen lips. Her brow pinched with pain, her delicate fingers shifting across the sheets, grasping blindly at the empty space beside her… searching instinctively for the warmth that had pinned her to the mattress only hours ago.

Damian watched her small hand clutch at the empty linen.

Something inside him shattered, then snapped back into cold resolve.

He leaned down, his broad shadow completely covering her fragile form. His lips hovered against the tender, exposed curve of her neck, inhaling the sweet, faint scent of jasmine.

*********************

The brass elevator chime echoed through the penthouse at seven in the morning.

When the doors slid open, Victoria Sterling and Valerie stepped into the foyer—and froze dead in their tracks.

The scent of stale scotch and dried copper hung heavy in the air. Across the expansive living room lay a landscape of total devastation: the half-ton marble console shattered across the floor, pulverized crystal twinkling in the pale morning light, and splintered mahogany scattered across the dark hardwood.

“My God…” Valerie breathed, her hand flying to her mouth, her face draining of all color.

Victoria didn’t flinch, but her grip on her designer leather handbag tightened until her knuckles turned white. Her sharp, aristocratic eyes swept over the bloodstains dried into the floorboards, an icy dread constricting her chest.

“Damian!” Victoria called out, her voice taut, carrying the sharp edge of a matriarch terrified of what her son had done.

Before the echo could fade, the double doors of the master bedroom clicked open.

Damian stepped out into the hallway. He had pulled on a fresh charcoal dress shirt, unbuttoned at the throat with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, but he looked completely wrecked. His jaw was lined with dark stubble, his obsidian eyes hollow and bloodshot, and both of his hands were wrapped in thick white gauze that showed faint blooms of dried crimson over the knuckles.

Victoria’s eyes dropped straight to his bandaged hands, then snapped up to his face, blazing with cold fury.

“What did you do, Damian?” Victoria demanded, her voice shaking with restrained rage as she stepped over a jagged shard of glass. “Look at this place! What did you do to her?”

“Keep your voice down,” Damian rumbled, his baritone low, gravelly, and lethal. He didn’t look at his mother; his gaze locked onto the ruined living room as he closed the bedroom doors behind him, sealing Ana inside the quiet room. “She is sleeping.”

“Sleeping?” Valerie’s voice broke into a trembling sob as she stepped past her mother, her eyes wide with terror. “Damian, she was at the gala! The viral clip… the cameras… Vivian ambushed her in front of the entire city! And then you bring her back here and tear the penthouse apart? Did you hurt her?”

“I didn’t touch her,” Damian snarled, his jaw locking so hard the bone ticked.

“Then what is this blood on the floor?” Victoria stepped directly into his space, refusing to back down. Her ivory silk coat brushed against his ruined furniture, her chin tilted high. “You went on another rampage because Vivian made a fool of you on national television? Because your pride couldn’t take the hit?”

“Mother, leave,” Damian warned, his voice a low vibration in his chest. “I have no patience for this today.”

“No, Damian, I will not leave!” Victoria’s composure fractured, the polished porcelain mask of the Sterling matriarch cracking wide open. “Look at what our pride has done to this family!”

Valerie leaned against the edge of the hallway wall, tears streaming freely down her cheeks, her voice choked with gut-wrenching remorse.

“It’s our fault…” Valerie wept, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as she looked at the closed bedroom door. “All of this… it’s our fault, Damian.”

Damian’s eyes darkened, his silhouette rigid against the morning light. “Valerie, stop talking.”

“No!” Valerie cried, shaking her head violently. “If Mother and I hadn’t been so full of hatred… if we hadn’t treated her like a leper when you first married her… none of this would have happened!”

The words hit the room like an artillery shell.

Victoria stood frozen, her eyes shining with unshed, agonizing tears, unable to utter a single word of defense.

“She was twenty years old, Damian,” Valerie sobbed, her voice breaking on every syllable. “We blamed her for what Richard Vance did to Father. We refused to see her. We refused to let her step foot in the family estate. Mother wouldn’t take her calls, and I hated her just for having the Vance name! If I had just met her once… if she knew what I looked like…”

Valerie pressed her trembling hands against her face, suffocating a ragged wail.

”…she would have known who was crying in your arms that night. She wouldn’t have thought you had another woman. She wouldn’t have let Vivian poison her mind, she wouldn’t have signed those divorce papers, and she wouldn’t have lost that baby alone in Pennsylvania!”

The silence that followed was suffocating, heavy as lead.

Victoria slowly closed her eyes, a single tear escaping down her aged cheek. The Sterling matriarch, who had survived scandals, bankruptcies, and her husband’s tragic death, looked utterly defeated.

“We built the trap that Vivian pushed her into,” Victoria whispered, her voice hollow, stripped of all aristocratic venom. She looked at her son, her gaze heavy with a mother’s profound, irredeemable guilt. “We thought we were punishing Richard Vance. But all we did was break an innocent girl who only ever loved you.”

Damian didn’t speak.

His bandaged hands hung heavy at his sides, his fingernails biting through the gauze into his torn palms. Every cruel truth they spoke mirrored the very nightmare that had kept him awake all night on the edge of the bed.

The bedroom door clicked open.

Anastasia stood in the doorway.

She was wrapped in an oversized charcoal cashmere robe belonging to Damian, its hem brushing the floor, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders in disarray. Her face was pale, her hazel eyes heavy with sleep, but completely clear.

She looked at Valerie weeping against the wall, at Victoria standing motionless with tears on her cheeks, and at Damian—the towering titan caught in the crossfire of his own family’s sins.

“Valerie,” Ana called out softly, her voice raspy, slicing cleanly through the thick grief choking the room.

All three Sterlings turned toward her in stunned, breathless silence.

Valerie’s breath caught in her throat. Seeing Ana standing there—draped in Damian’s heavy charcoal robe, her face pale, the dark shadows under her eyes a testament to the hell she had survived—completely shattered whatever composure Valerie had left.

“Ana…” Valerie choked out, stumbling forward across the hardwood, not even caring about the crunch of glass beneath her designer heels.

Damian shifted instinctively, his bandaged hand lifting to intercept his sister, but Ana gave a subtle, almost imperceptible shake of her head. Damian froze, his jaw clenching as he lowered his arm, stepping aside to let them face each other.

Valerie stopped a foot away, her hands trembling violently at her sides, tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Valerie sobbed, her voice small, shattered, sounding like the terrified teenager who had clutched a teddy bear at her father’s funeral. “I am so, so sorry, Ana. If I had just reached out to you… if I hadn’t let my anger blind me… you wouldn’t have been alone. You wouldn’t have lost the baby. I let Vivian use me, and it almost destroyed you.”

Ana looked at the girl in front of her.

Two years ago, Valerie’s coldness had felt like a wall of ice. But standing in the pale light of morning, Ana didn’t see an arrogant heiress. She saw a girl who had been preyed upon by the same viper that had tried to swallow her whole.

Slowly, Ana lifted her hands and gently took Valerie’s trembling wrists, holding her steady.

“Stop crying, Valerie,” Ana said softly, her voice steady and deliberate. “Look at me.”

Valerie lifted her red-rimmed eyes, sniffling.

“You were hurting, and Vivian fed on that pain,” Ana continued, her gaze unwavering. “We cannot change what happened in Pennsylvania. We cannot rewrite the two years that rotted between us. But standing here, drowning in your own guilt? That is exactly what Vivian Stark wants. She wants this house fractured. She wants you weeping, and she wants me running.”

Ana’s fingers tightened slightly around Valerie’s wrists, grounding her.

“I am not running anymore,” Ana said, a sharp, unyielding steel threading through her tone. “And neither are you.”