Her name was Veronica, and she made it abundantly clear within the very first minute of their introduction that she wanted Damien, and cared very little about who happened to be watching when she made that fact obvious.
She cornered him at the next event they attended together, a fundraiser for a children’s hospital wing, laughing far too loudly at everything he said, her manicured hand resting possessively against his forearm like it already belonged there.
“Damien, you remember me,” she said, entirely ignoring Silveria’s presence beside him.
“We met at the Whitmore gala last year.
I never forgot you.”
“I remember,” Damien said, his voice flat and carefully neutral, though he didn’t pull his arm away quite fast enough for Silveria’s comfort.
“You look wonderful,” Veronica continued, undeterred.
“Marriage clearly agrees with you.” Her eyes finally slid over toward Silveria, cold and thoroughly assessing, taking in every visible detail of her dress, her hair, her carefully composed expression.
“And this must be your wife.
How sweet.”
“Silveria,” she said, extending her hand, refusing to shrink beneath the woman’s obvious scrutiny.
Veronica shook it briefly, the gesture as limp and reluctant as touching something distasteful.
“Right.
The substitute.
I read all about you in the papers, of course.”
“Did you,” Silveria said flatly, keeping her voice carefully controlled.
“Don’t worry yourself,” Veronica said, smiling in a way that held absolutely no real warmth in it whatsoever.
“I’m certain you’re perfectly nice, for whatever it is you actually are.”
Silveria felt heat crawl slowly up her neck, old instincts screaming at her to simply shrink smaller and say nothing, the same instincts she’d carried her entire childhood at the Hitler house.
She fought them down with considerable effort.
“And what exactly am I?” she asked, her voice steady despite her hands trembling slightly at her sides.
Veronica’s smile faltered, clearly not having expected any real pushback.
“A stand-in,” she said, recovering quickly.
“Everyone at this entire event already knows it, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not.”
“Enough.” Damien’s voice cut through sharply, sharp enough to slice through the noise of the surrounding crowd entirely.
“Veronica.
That’s quite enough.”
She blinked, visibly startled by the sudden, absolute authority in his tone.
“I was only making conversation—”
“You were insulting my wife,” he said, his voice carrying easily across the small circle of onlookers who had begun to notice the exchange.
“Directly in front of me.
I’d strongly suggest finding someone else to entertain yourself with for the remainder of the evening.”
Silveria stood there, genuinely stunned, watching Damien’s jaw remain tight even after the other woman had fully disappeared into the crowd.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Silveria said quietly, once the immediate tension had settled somewhat.
“Yes, I did,” he said, turning to look at her directly.
“Nobody talks to you that way, Silveria.
Not while I’m standing right there beside you.”
“You’ve said something similar before,” she reminded him gently, thinking of the dinner party weeks earlier, of Genevieve’s cruel comments and his equally swift, equally certain defense.
“I meant it then too,” he said, something rough entering his voice now.
“I intend to keep meaning it, for as long as this arrangement lasts between us.”
She didn’t have a proper response ready for that.
She simply stood there beside him, her heart doing something complicated and increasingly dangerous, wondering how a man who had so plainly told her, on their very first morning together, not to fall in love with him, kept doing precisely the kinds of things that made following that particular instruction so remarkably difficult to manage.
They stayed close together for the remainder of the fundraiser, and Silveria noticed, with some quiet satisfaction, that nobody else attempted anything quite so cruel toward her for the rest of the evening.
Veronica reappeared once more before the night finally ended, though considerably more subdued this time, catching Silveria alone near the coat check while Damien spoke with a colleague nearby.
“I owe you an apology, I suppose,” Veronica said, something stiff and reluctant in her tone.
“That wasn’t especially fair of me earlier.”
Silveria studied her carefully, unconvinced by the sudden shift.
“Why the change of heart?”
“Damien Crew doesn’t defend people he doesn’t genuinely care about,” Veronica said, something almost bitter beneath the grudging admission.
“I’ve known him for years.
I’ve never once seen him speak to anyone the way he spoke to me tonight, on someone else’s behalf.”
“I didn’t ask him to defend me.”
“I’m certain you didn’t,” Veronica said.
“That’s rather the point, isn’t it.
He did it anyway.” She studied Silveria a moment longer, something almost curious replacing the earlier hostility.
“Whatever this marriage actually is, it seems to be considerably more than the arrangement everyone assumed it would be.”
She left without waiting for a response, and Silveria stood there processing the strange exchange, something unsettled and thoughtful lingering in its wake.
Damien found her a few minutes later, his expression questioning.
“Everything alright?” he asked.
“Veronica apologized,” Silveria said, still slightly stunned by it.
“That’s unexpected,” Damien said, something wry in his tone.
“She’s not usually one for admitting fault.”
“She said something else too,” Silveria said carefully.
“About this marriage being considerably more than everyone assumed it would be.”
Something flickered across his face, complicated and difficult to properly read.
“Is she wrong?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she admitted.
“I don’t think she is.”
He didn’t say anything further to that, but something in his expression, soft and slightly overwhelmed, told her the admission had landed exactly where she’d intended it to.
The drive home passed in comfortable quiet, both of them replaying the strange evening in their own way.
Silveria found herself thinking about Veronica’s observation long after they’d arrived back at the estate, turning it over the way she turned over an unfinished sketch, testing whether it held together properly under closer examination.
“Can I ask you something?” she said, once they were settled in the sitting room with the last of the evening’s tension finally easing from her shoulders.
“Of course.”
“Why did you actually marry into this alliance in the first place?” she asked.
“Before any of this, before me, before Lilibeth ran.
What did the arrangement mean to you originally?”
Damien considered the question carefully.
“Business security, mostly,” he admitted.
“The Hitler and Crew families have overlapping interests in shipping and logistics.
An alliance protected both companies from certain competitive pressures.
That was the entire calculation, as far as I understood it going in.”
“No part of you hoped for something more?
Even a little?”
“I didn’t allow myself to hope for anything more,” he said quietly.
“Hoping felt like inviting disappointment.
I’d learned that lesson thoroughly enough already.”
“And now?” she asked softly.
He was quiet for a long moment, something vulnerable crossing his usually careful features.
“Now I’m considerably less certain what I originally expected matters very much anymore,” he admitted.
“Tonight complicated things I thought I’d settled a long time ago.”
Something warm and fragile passed between them at that admission, and Silveria found herself hoping, despite every careful warning she’d given herself, that whatever tonight had complicated for him might eventually settle into something neither of them needed to be afraid of.
“For what it’s worth,” she said softly, “I’m glad tonight complicated things.
I’d rather have something real and uncertain than something safe and hollow.”
Something almost like relief crossed his face at that.
“I think I’d rather have that too,” he admitted, “though I’m still learning how to properly want something without immediately bracing for the loss of it.”
“Maybe we can learn that together,” she offered.
“Maybe,” he agreed, and for a while longer, they sat together in the quiet sitting room, saying little else, content simply to exist in each other’s company as the last of the evening finally settled into memory, the earlier cruelty of Genevieve’s words feeling considerably smaller now than the quiet, honest thing that had grown steadily in its place.