The car sped quietly through the night as Damien closed his eyes and rested. Diana did not look at him anymore, she sat with perfect posture. her eyes staring out the window, but she felt the weight of Damien's silence like a boulder pressed to her spine.
When the city lights began to fade and the scenery changed. The glassy towers give way to crumbling tenements. There were shuttered shops, and the occasional flicker of neon from half-dead signs. Damien finally shifted and opened his eyes with a frown when he felt the car shook a little.
His eyes narrowed at the streets beyond the window. There were potholes all around, scarring the road like open wounds. Some alleys had garbage piled high, and the buildings leaned slightly from age and disrepair. His nose scrunched up even though the windows were closed. The driver took out a spray bottle and passed it to Diana. She bit her lips but sprayed it all around. There was not a functional street lamp as they moved further. Damien could see a few thugs standing in the corner drinking and smoking in the open. His frown grew deeper when Diana pointed in that direction only.
"Turn right here," Diana instructed quietly.
The driver slowed and followed the road deeper into the decaying neighborhood. A group of boys loitered at a corner, smoking under the pale blue buzz of a flickering sign. Further ahead, the sidewalk was cracked, lined with the dim outlines of rusted bicycles and shuttered windows.
"This is where you live?" Damien asked finally, his voice low and tight full of discomfort.
Diana gave him a glance. Her expression was calm, but her brow lifted in dry amusement.
"Why? Are you worried I might get stabbed before I repay the loan sharks?" He didn't smile and her joke.
She exhaled softly and turned to face the front again. "I don't live here because I like it, Mr. Albrecht. I live here because I don't have money to afford anything better."
The words were unvarnished and honest. They hung in the air like sharp glass, cutting through the silence. Damien said nothing, but his jaw tightened visibly. His gaze swept the road again. As if those graffiti-covered walls and a broken lamp post was not enough, a street dog nosing an overflowing trash bin and those thugs turning in the car's direction with the eyes of a predator. It felt wrong and unsettling.
When the car came to a halt in front of a battered iron gate with a peeling sign that read Hollow Ridge Apartments, Diana opened the door.
"Goodnight, sir," she said plainly as she stepped out hurriedly as if she did not want to be seen with the car.
He didn't reply but he could not take his eyes away from her departing figure. The iron gate creaked behind her as she slipped inside.The car waited until the gate clicked shut before pulling away.
Damien sat back, fingers tapping once on his thigh before falling still.
"We always investigate every staff member before hiring them. Are we not following the procedures with her?" he murmured softly before sending a message to his assistant. The car slowly started to pull back and leave for his own manor.
The car slowly reached another area completely different from where Diana lived. The place was heavily guarded with the best roads and beautiful scenery. The large door opened only after confirming the car plate and the place smelled of rare roses.
The heavy lock clicked as he entered his large manor. his shoes echoing against the polished floor. When he opened the door, Soft jazz played in the background, and the faint scent of wine and something floral hung in the air.
Evelyn sat on the cream-colored sofa near the window, her legs crossed elegantly. She wore a sleek, branded dress with her hair loosely curled, and a book half open in her lap, though her eyes had clearly stopped reading long ago.
She didn't greet him. She didn't even look up. It had been a week since their argument when he stopped speaking to her but instead of feeling uneasy or worried about it, she was enjoying the calmness in her lies. If Damien had not seen it himself, he would have believed that she was faking it. But now he could see that she did not care about him at all and it affected him more than he had expected.
Damien's eyes narrowed at the sight.
"You are making yourself comfortable," he muttered, slipping out of his coat.
Evelyn finally looked at him but her face did not show any kind of imagination. "It is a comfortable recliner and the book is nice"
He stepped closer, each footfall heavy with restrained anger. "Have you ever lived in a place where the roads were cracked and there wasn't even a single working streetlight?"
Evelyn blinked slowly. She didn't answer but the words felt oddly familiar. He had gone to drop Diana already. In her last life, it had taken him a month to take the initiative. Had her absence in the office accelerated the events? He watched her with a strange look that left his nerves uneasy.
His voice dropped to a cold murmur. "Because if my family hadn't taken you in after your parents died, you would have known exactly what that feels like."
Her fingers froze on the edge of her book, just for a heartbeat. Then she looked up again, meeting his gaze without flinching.
"And have you ever thought," she said quietly, "where your family would have ended up if my parents hadn't saved yours?"
Damien stilled. Evelyn's voice sharpened not in volume, but in precision. "We could have switched places, Damien. That same road, that same streetlight you are imagining for me, it could have been your home."