Triggered by a Whisper.
Meanwhile, in Damien's office, Eric entered to find his boss seated in his leather swivel chair, rolling a small ball in his palm, lost in thought.
"Sir," Eric began, "will you be staying back tonight?"
"I don't know yet," Damien replied absently.
Eric hesitated. "Also, I just saw Miss Eva outside. She's still working.. and it's getting late. Shouldn't she be heading home by now?"
"She stays until the work is done," Damien said without looking up.
"Which means she might have to sleep over?" Eric raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know, and I don't care."
Eric sighed. "Alright, if you say so. She did look exhausted, though. I noticed blisters on her feet, probably the heels and the stress. But hey, it's none of my business," he added, turning to leave while silently counting to ten.
He barely got to five before Damien stopped him.
Although someone else did as well.
It was Eva.
Eva suddenly burst into Damien's office, barefoot, limping and visibly shaken. Her eyes were wide with panic, her hands shaking as she gripped the doorframe. She looked like she had run through a storm.
"Sir, please," she blurted out, her voice trembling, "I—I really need your help. I swear I'll owe you big this time. Can you maybe take me to the hospital? It's late and I probably won't get a cab. I have an emergency, please!"
She spoke so fast her words nearly tumbled over each other. Her hands were shaking, and Damien could see the panic all over her face.
Damien glanced up from his desk, then he leaned back slowly in his chair, his eyes eyes narrowing as he took in her appearance, she looked disheveled visibly her hair especially, then comes the desperation and there was also, the reddened eyes, the bruised feet. And yet, his voice came out cold, distant.
"Are you seriously sending your boss on an errand.. on your first day at work?"
Eva shook her head quickly, tears brimming in her eyes. "No! I mean, no, that's not what I meant. I just thought, that.. thought that maybe..if you could lend me your car, just for an hour. I'll return it. I swear I will, even if it is just for a few minutes, that would be more than enough"
"My car?" Damien repeated, brow arching. "You mean my cyber trunk, the one worth millions of dollars? And you, standing here trembling like a leaf, think I'll just hand over the keys to someone who barely stand upright?"
His words were sharp, clipped. They hit arder than she expected.
"What happens if you crash it huh? Who's paying for the damage, Eva?"
His tone was flat, cold, like a judge passing a sentence. He looked like a heartless lord straight from the pit of hell, untouched by the desperation before him.
"I swear I'll be careful, please I beg you, I tried getting a carb but couldn't, please help me okay, I am begging you not as your employee but like a sister, it will really be nice of you to help me sir"
Damien arched a brow, leaning back with a cool, unreadable expression. "You know, I really don't like that word, 'nice.' I think that's where the problem is, Why would you even think I'd hand over my cyber trunk to you, who are you by the way?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Fine, what happens if you wreck it? What if your panic drives you straight into a wall? Who's going to cover the damage? You?"
His voice was calm, dangerously calm, like a sharp blade hidden behind a velvet curtain.
"Please, I'm begging you," Eva whispered, her eyes glassy with tears. "My mom, she's dying. I need to get to the hospital now."
Damien's expression darkened for a moment before he said coolly,
"I've been told you often use your mother's health as an excuse to skip duties. he said flatly. "How convenient. Using your mother's health again and again to get out of responsibilities. If her condition is really that critical, maybe you should be with her full time."
He leaned back in his chair, his tone devoid of warmth. "This is a company, not a charity. We're here to work. If you can't keep up, then maybe you're in the wrong place."
Eva stood frozen. For a second, her lips parted, as if to say more, but the words wouldn't come. Her shoulders slumped. The light in her eyes dimmed.
And Eric folded his arms across his chest, silently watching the scene unfold, things has just gotten a little more interesting, he knew he was definitely in for a show.
Eva gasped, stunned, completely blindsided by Damien's coldness. This was definitely not the Damien she thought she knew. The man standing before her now felt like a stranger. No, worse, a machine. Cold. Heartless.
Like someone who had locked away every trace of humanity.
Then, without thinking, driven by sheer desperation, Eva did something that stunned everyone in the room.
She rushed toward him, dropped to her knees, and clutched his feet, her sobs shaking her whole body.
"Please, help me. If my mother dies, I don't want to live either. Damien, I'm begging you.." Her voice cracked as tears soaked into the expensive fabric of his trousers.
And in that moment, something shifted in him.
Something unfamiliar, unsettling, and deeply human
Honestly, Damien had been planning to dismiss her the second Eric mentioned she looked exhausted. He'd noticed her limping earlier, he wasn't blind and had silently concluded it was from the ridiculous heels she'd been forced to wear. But still, he hadn't cared. And yes, it was him he was the one who had orchestrated the overload of work she'd been buried under all day.
Why?
Because he was angry. Unreasonably angry.
Especially after overhearing her tell Mr. Ben she'd rather work under Morgan than with him.That one comment stung more than he cared to admit. It bruised something he didn't even know still existed. So, in a fit of bruised ego, he decided to give her a taste of Morgan's brutal standards, strict, heartless, merciless, just to show her what "preference" really looked like.
When he noticed she was preparing to leave, something in him snapped. Out of spite, he dropped a thick stack of files on her desk not because the work was urgent or even necessary. In truth, he had no intention of letting her handle any of it. He simply wanted to rattle her, to make her feel the same sting of disregard she'd shown him. She treated him like he was invisible, like he didn't matter and this was his petty way of forcing her to notice.
But when she began pleading, something twisted and strange settled in his chest. Watching her humbled and desperate beneath his gaze stirred a dark satisfaction in him. For a brief moment, he just wanted her to have a hard time for not acknowledging him, and treating him so insignificant and indifferent.
But when she started begging, he felt oddly pleased, seeing her grovel at his mercy gave him a strange sense of power, like he was on top of the world. He had only wanted to flex his muscle a little by teasing her to make a point, but he hadn't expected such outcome.
The way she rushed to him and clung to his feet left him completely defenseless. There was something so raw, so desperate in her gesture it stirred something deep inside him. Only one person had ever shaken him like that before. Tyler.
She had always acted on impulse, bold and unfiltered, doing the kind of things that caught him completely off guard but somehow touched him in ways he couldn't explain. He could still remember the day they met on that beach, how she looked him straight in the eyes and said she wanted to be his girlfriend no hesitation, just heart. Or how she would boldly kiss him. Well that was the picture he has of Tyler. And now, here was Eva, standing before him, doing something eerily similar and it was messing with his head more than he cared to admit.
And when she suddenly clung to his feet, God, it shook him to his core. Her wails, so raw and vulnerable, made him want to lay heaven and earth at her feet just to make it stop. But what truly unraveled him was the way she called his name.
There was something deeply familiar in her voice, so casual, so natural, like she'd said it a thousand times before. It echoed exactly the way someone he knows would always calls him.
Damien stood quietly in the hospital corridor, dressed in a long, thick black coat, his face carved in its usual grumpy expression. Doctors and nurses moved past him in a steady stream, and though he couldn't tell how long he'd been standing there minutes, maybe even hours time seemed to blur.
Peeking into the ward, his gaze landed on Eva. She was seated beside a woman connected to wires and tubes, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. Her voice, broken and pleading, drifted down the hallway.
"Please don't leave me.. Mama, please."
There was something deeply painful about the scene, too raw, too real. It hit him harder than he expected. Life, he could tell, hadn't been that kind to her. And in that moment, he couldn't bear to keep watching. Turning abruptly, he chose to leave. Damien walked out of the hospital with a heaviness in his chest.
He slipped into his car and drove off, jaw clenched. He had overheard the doctor mention they'd stabilized the patient, for now. He didn't need anyone to explain further. That woman was clearly Eva's mother. And Eva... Eva was drowning in a kind of pain that didn't need words.
He told himself this wasn't his concern. He wasn't supposed to care. But something about her always triggered a response in him like a splinter buried too deep to ignore.
Even earlier, at the office, the way she'd cried his name soft, desperate still echoed in his mind. He didn't even know how he got to the hospital. He just knew he had grabbed his car keys and walked out of the office with Eva trailing behind him. His feet had taken him straight to the garage. Straight to the car. Straight here.
He couldn't' think of any other thing but the sound of his name being called like that from her lips.
He had never been closed to her and he wondered why she should address him that casually, but that would probably be a topic for another day.