ARIA'S POV
The rain on the car window mirrored the blur in my mind. Streaks of light from passing streetlamps smeared into glowing haloes, disorienting and unreal. The city outside was a dream I couldn't grasp.
Inside the luxury sedan, the silence was a living thing. It sat between me and the man driving, thick and cold. Damian. My husband.
My fingers twisted in the soft fabric of the borrowed sweater, a nervous, constant motion. I stole a glance at his profile, etched in the dashboard's faint glow. Handsome in a severe, untouchable way. His hands rested on the steering wheel with an absolute certainty, his gaze fixed ahead, seeing everything and giving away nothing. A man carved from control.
"Where are we going?" My voice was small, swallowed by the car's insulated quiet.
"Home." The single word was a verdict, not an invitation.
Home. It should have been a comfort. Instead, a cold dread pooled in my stomach. I was being taken to a place I was supposed to know, to a life I was supposed to have lived. It felt less like a homecoming and more like an abduction into my own past.
The car turned onto a private road, flanked by towering hedges that gave way to immense, black wrought-iron gates. They swung open soundlessly as we approached, as if recognizing their master. And beyond them…
The Hart Mansion.
It wasn't a house. It was a monument. A sprawling edifice of stone and glass that rose against the stormy sky, its windows glowing like watchful, amber eyes. Manicured grounds stretched into the darkness, perfectly ordered, utterly silent. It was breathtaking. It was a cage.
The car purred to a stop on the circular drive. Damian exited, a study in elegant, efficient movement, and opened my door. Rain misted the air, cool against my feverish skin.
I didn't move.
He extended no hand, but his presence was a command. "Aria."
The sound of my name on his lips still sent an inexplicable shiver through me—a confusing mix of fear and something else, a faint, ghostly echo of… what? I couldn't name it. Clutching the thin hospital blanket around my shoulders like a shield, I forced my legs to obey, stepping out onto the smooth, wet stone.
The mansion loomed, its grand double doors an imposing mouth. He led the way, and I followed, a stranger in my own life, crossing the threshold into a past I could not remember.
The foyer was a shock of opulent stillness. Vast marble floors reflected the light of a chandelier that looked like a frozen cascade of crystal. The air was cool, scented faintly with lemon polish and something floral, expensive and impersonal. Portraits in gilded frames watched from the walls. My eyes scanned the faces—stern ancestors, elegant women—searching for my own and finding nothing.
"This is it," Damian said, his voice echoing softly in the cavernous space.
I stood rooted to the spot, dwarfed by the grandeur. Three years, he'd said. Three years of my life had unfolded within these walls, and they held no warmth for me. Only a sterile, museum-like perfection.
My gaze dropped to the polished floor, and I saw her—a pale, wide-eyed woman wrapped in a grey blanket, her hair a mess, her posture screaming uncertainty. My reflection. A ghost in a gilded hall.
"I don't remember," I whispered, the confession torn from me. "Any of it."
He didn't offer comfort. He simply watched me, his dark eyes missing nothing—the tremor in my hands, the rapid pulse I could feel in my own throat. "You will," he stated, with a conviction that felt more like a threat than a promise. "In time."
He moved past me, his footsteps silent on the rug. "Come. I'll show you to your room."
Your room. Not our room. The distinction was a small relief, a tiny space to call my own in this overwhelming strangeness.
I followed him up a sweeping staircase, my hand trailing on the cool, polished banister. The hallway upstairs was long, lined with closed doors and more artwork. It felt less like a home and more like the quiet wing of a very exclusive, very lonely hotel.
He stopped before a door at the end of the hall and pushed it open.
The room within was beautiful. A symphony of soft creams and muted blues, with a large canopy bed and a sitting area by a fireplace. A wall of windows overlooked the dark, sprawling gardens. It was impersonal, yet clearly decorated with care and a vast amount of money. It felt like a suite prepared for a very important, very fragile guest.
"This is yours," he said, standing back to let me enter. "Your clothes are in the dressing room. The en suite is through there. If you need anything, press the button by the bed. Mrs. Finch, the housekeeper, will come."
I stepped inside, the plush carpet swallowing my footsteps. It was a gorgeous cage.
He didn't follow me in. He remained in the doorway, a tall, dark silhouette against the warm light of the hall. "Try to rest. The doctor said routine and calm will help."
I turned to face him, wrapping my arms around myself. "Damian?"
He stilled, as if my use of his name was a surprise. "Yes?"
The questions were a tangled knot in my chest. Who were we? Why don't I feel love when I look at you? What happened to me? What are you hiding? But faced with his impenetrable calm, all I could manage was a frail, "Thank you."
Something flickered in his eyes—something complex and unreadable. It was gone in an instant. He gave a single, short nod. "Goodnight, Aria."
The door closed with a soft, final click. Not a slam, but a seal.
I was alone.
The silence in the beautiful room was profound. I walked to the window, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. The rain had stopped, leaving the world outside slick and shadowed. Somewhere out there, was a city I supposedly knew. A life I had lived. A woman I had been.
Who was she? The woman who had married Damian Hart? Was she bold? Was she happy? Was she afraid?
A movement in the gardens below caught my eye—a shadow detaching itself from the deeper shadows near the gate. A figure, standing still, looking up. Directly at my window.
My breath hitched. I stumbled back from the glass, my heart hammering. When I dared to look again, the figure was gone. Vanished into the night.
Was it a trick of the light? The product of an exhausted, fractured mind?
Or was it proof that the unknown wasn't just inside these walls, but waiting outside them, too?
I backed away from the window, the beautiful room suddenly feeling exposed. I was in a fortress, but I had no idea if the walls were meant to keep the world out… or to keep me in.
And the man who held the key—my husband—was the greatest mystery of all.
DAMIAN'S POV (From the hallway)
I stood outside her door long after I closed it, listening to the silence. I could picture her inside, small and lost in that vast room, a room she'd once filled with laughter and light and later, with tense silence.
She doesn't remember.
The thought was a physical pain, a constant, grinding ache beneath my ribs. She'd looked at her reflection on the marble floor as if it were a stranger's. She'd looked at me the same way.
Every instinct screamed to go back in. To sit with her. To talk until the sun rose, to will my memories into her mind through sheer force of need. To make her see.
But I'd seen the skittish fear in her eyes when I moved too close. The flinch was a language I understood now. Pushing would only drive her further into the shell shock of her amnesia.
Patience. It was a weapon I'd never been good with. I was a man of action, of decisive strikes and uncompromising control. But this… this required a different kind of strength. The strength to stand still. To wait. To watch the woman I love gaze through me as if I were glass.
I turned from her door, my footsteps silent on the runner. The mansion felt different with her in it again. The emptiness had a new quality—