Chapter 6 THE LOCKED DRAWER

I shouldn’t have been in the office.

I know that the second I step through the door. It’s quiet in a way that makes the air feel heavier. The desk is large, polished, intimidating the kind of desk that seems to demand respect. I don’t respect it. I need answers. Curiosity has a weight I can’t ignore tonight. It pulls at me, relentless, like a tide I can’t fight.

The room smells of wood and leather, faintly of coffee, and something metallic beneath it. I glance around, my gaze landing on a locked drawer at the side of the desk. It calls to me, like it knows what I’m looking for even if I don’t. It isn’t just curiosity. It’s needed. A compulsion I can’t justify, and maybe shouldn’t.

My fingers hover over the keyhole. I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. Every instinct tells me to step back, to leave it alone. But the pull is magnetic. I’ve spent years piecing together fragments of my past, trying to understand the man my father was or wasn’t. Maybe tonight, I’ll get a clue. Maybe tonight, I’ll finally understand why nothing in my life feels safe.

I rummage through the top drawer first, pretending I’m looking for pens, paper. The papers are mundane bills, a few notes, receipts but then I find a small envelope marked with my father’s name. My heart hammers against my ribs, loud enough that I think it might echo through the room.

I hesitate, then slide it out. My hands shake. The envelope is thick with documents, letters, photographs… things I wasn’t supposed to see. My chest feels tight, each breath shallow. It’s as if just touching the envelope has pulled me deeper into something I’m unprepared for.

A photograph slips from the stack. It’s my father, younger than I remember, smiling at someone whose face I can’t make out. There’s a folded note beneath it. I open it carefully. The handwriting is precise. Familiar, but not my father’s. The ink is sharp, the words deliberate, and I can feel the weight of them before I even read.

I hear the click behind me before I can process it.

“Seraphina.”

The single word makes my skin crawl. I whirl around. Damon stands in the doorway, tall, dark, every bit the storm I’ve been trying to ignore. His presence fills the room without moving an inch. His eyes are sharp, unreadable, and for a moment, I feel like a child caught in a storm he refuses to acknowledge. My chest tightens, and guilt slices into me like a blade.

“I…” I stammer. “I was just…”

“You were just prying,” he interrupts softly, but the force behind the calm is terrifying. “You should leave.”

“I needed to know!” I snap, unable to hold back the flood of frustration and hurt. “Why is my father’s name locked away? Why do you have this?”

He steps closer. Not angry, but his presence presses down on me, each inch deliberate. “You always had questions, Seraphina. I knew that before you even stepped through that door tonight.”

“Before I even..what?” My voice trembles. “What are you saying?”

“I knew more about your life than I should have,” he admits, voice low, deliberate. “More than I was ever supposed to.”

The words hit like a punch. I stagger back, almost dropping the documents. My hands clutch the envelope like it’s the last thing tethering me to something real. “Why? Why would you?”

His expression softens just enough to confuse me. There’s a tension there I can’t place, like he’s torn between telling me the truth and holding me at arm’s length. “Because you were never just Catherine’s daughter to me.”

The sentence hangs in the room, heavy and suffocating. It twists in my chest, unexpected and impossible to ignore.

I feel a fracture inside me, a fissure forming between trust and suspicion. My vision blurs not with tears yet, but with disbelief. The room feels smaller now, like the walls are leaning in, closing off options I didn’t know I had. Every shadow seems to echo the weight of his words.

“You…what?!” I manage, my voice rising despite my effort to stay calm. “What does that even mean?”

He doesn’t answer directly. Instead, he steps around the desk and picks up a pen, placing it back in the holder as if nothing has happened. The movement is deliberate, controlled. I can feel his weight pressing against the space between us without a single step forward.

“You don’t need to understand now,” he says quietly, almost gently. “But know this…you’re part of something bigger than you realize.”

I shake my head, confusion spiraling into anger. “I don’t even know what that means! You’ve been lying. You’ve been controlling. Watching. And now… this? You’ve been keeping my father from me?”

He looks at me then, and there’s something raw in his eyes….a flicker of pain, of fear, of something I can’t name. Something he can’t say out loud. “Not keeping him from you. Protecting you from what comes with knowing too much too soon.”

“Protecting me from what? You?!” My voice cracks, echoing off the walls. It’s sharper than I intend, carrying the weight of months of uncertainty, of questions I’ve kept buried.

“I’m not your enemy,” he says, and yet everything about him screams otherwise.

I clutch the envelope to my chest, the papers trembling in my hands. “Then why… why does it feel like you’ve been waiting for me to slip?”

Damon doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. His gaze says it all. That tight line of his jaw, the shadow in his eyes, the way his body holds itself in restraint it’s more than an explanation. It's a warning. It’s true.

“You were never just Catherine’s daughter to me,” he repeats, voice quieter this time, almost like a confession meant only for himself.

And then he turns. Walks away.

The office feels empty instantly, cold and alien, the air heavy with his absence. I sink into the chair, clutching the envelope, every nerve in my body alive with questions. Every instinct screaming that nothing in this house or in him is as it seems.

I stare at the locked drawer, at the secrets it holds, and for the first time, the truth hits me fully: Damon Blackwood is not just controlling. He is afraid.

And that fear… it terrifies me more than anything else I’ve uncovered tonight.

Because it isn’t just his control that’s dangerous. It’s the reason behind it. The invisible threat, the hidden enemies, the past that refuses to stay buried. It presses against me in ways I can’t ignore.

I want to close the drawer. I want to lock it and pretend none of this happened. But I know that pretending is no longer an option. Not for me. Not for him. Not for the truth.

I sit back in the chair, the envelope clutched to my chest, and let the weight of everything settle on me. The house is quiet around me, indifferent, but I can feel the tension in the walls, the echo of Damon’s presence lingering like a storm cloud that hasn’t passed.

Tonight, I’ve crossed a line. Not the line of rules, not the line of etiquette. But the line of understanding. I know now that nothing in this house is simple, and nothing about Damon is what it seems.

And for the first time, I realize that fear can be as dangerous as any enemy.