Felix found Damien out in the garden roughly an hour later, standing perfectly still near the old stone fountain, staring out at nothing in particular, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets.
"You told her not to fall in love with you," Felix said, barely bothering to hide his obvious amusement at the entire developing situation.
"News apparently travels remarkably fast in this house."
"Rosa overheard the whole exchange. Rosa tells me absolutely everything that happens around here, you know that perfectly well by now." Felix leaned casually against a nearby stone pillar, grinning widely. "That's a rather strange thing to say to a woman you only just properly met yesterday, don't you think, even by your standards?"
"It needed to be said clearly, from the very start, before any confusion could develop between us."
"Did it, though?" Felix pressed, tilting his head slightly. "Or did you simply want to hear yourself say it out loud, so you'd believe it a little more firmly yourself, given how unsettled you clearly are by her?"
Damien turned a sharp, warning look on him. "Careful, Felix."
"I'm being completely serious, for once," Felix said, his usual teasing tone dropping away entirely into something considerably more genuine. "You've spent years now making absolutely certain nobody gets close enough to properly matter to you, not since everything happened with your family. Now there's a woman living under your roof who never once asked for any part of this situation, who handled last night considerably better than most people would have managed after losing their entire life in one single afternoon, and your very first instinct upon meeting her properly is to build an entire wall before she's even finished unpacking her belongings."
"That is precisely the point," Damien said firmly, though something in his own voice sounded less certain than he intended. "Walls work, Felix. They've always worked perfectly well for me, ever since I was ten years old."
"Walls also mean you never let anyone close enough to actually know the real you underneath them," Felix said gently. "I've watched you build that particular wall brick by brick for seventeen years now. I just don't want to watch you disappear behind it entirely."
Damien didn't have a particularly good response ready for that observation, not one he was genuinely willing to say out loud, so he changed the subject entirely instead. "I want you to properly look into her background," he said. "Thoroughly this time, Felix, not simply enough to confirm she's genuinely Lilibeth's adopted sister and nothing more."
"Why exactly?" Felix asked, his expression shifting into something more focused and professional.
"Because something about her simply doesn't properly add up," Damien said, frowning as he tried to put proper words to the strange, nagging feeling that had followed him relentlessly since their unexpected encounter in the kitchen the previous night. "The way she carries herself, entirely unafraid despite everything. The way she looked at me directly, almost like she recognized something familiar in my face. I want to know absolutely everything about her past, especially where she actually came from before the Hitlers formally adopted her into their family."
Felix's easy grin faded slowly into something considerably more serious and thoughtful. "You genuinely think there's more going on here than a simple, unfortunate wedding mix-up."
"I honestly don't know precisely what I think yet," Damien admitted. "I just know that I want real, proper answers before I decide how to move forward with any of this."
"I'll have Benson start pulling whatever records still exist somewhere," Felix said. "Though it might take some considerable time to track down properly. Adoption files from that far back aren't always the easiest things in the world to locate, especially if the family involved wanted certain details kept quiet."
"Take whatever time you genuinely need," Damien said. "I have a strong, persistent feeling this entire situation isn't nearly as simple as it currently appears on the surface."
• • •
Inside the enormous house, Silveria was slowly beginning to learn her way around, room by careful room, with Rosa serving as her patient, cheerful guide throughout the long, quiet morning.
"This entire wing here is the library," Rosa said, pushing open a set of tall wooden doors to reveal a room stacked floor to ceiling with books of every conceivable size and color. "Mr. Crew doesn't spend much time in here anymore, hasn't for years now, but you're more than welcome to make use of it whenever you'd like, dear."
Silveria ran her fingers slowly along a row of worn, familiar-feeling spines, genuinely marveling at the quiet, dusty peace radiating steadily from the enormous, sunlit room. "It's absolutely beautiful in here."
"It used to be his mother's favorite room in the entire house," Rosa said, something noticeably softer entering her weathered voice. "Before she passed away, along with his father and his little sister."
Silveria turned quickly at that. "His mother? I heard something about an accident, but no real details."
Rosa hesitated visibly, like she had already said considerably more than she originally intended to properly share with a stranger who had only just arrived the night before. "It's really not my place to discuss the family's personal history in detail, dear, not without Mr. Crew's proper blessing first."
"I completely understand," Silveria said gently, though her curiosity remained sharply piqued. "I won't push you any further for more details."
But the small, unfinished piece of information stuck with her regardless for the remainder of the tour, turning over slowly in her mind. Damien Crew, the man who had flatly told her, not two hours earlier, not to fall in love with him, who kept himself locked so carefully behind walls thick enough to shut out an entire staff of people who clearly and genuinely cared about him, there was a real story hiding there somewhere beneath all that careful control. A painful one too, judging by the careful, deliberate way Rosa had avoided elaborating any further on the topic.
Silveria understood painful stories better than most people her age properly could. She carried one of her own tucked carefully away where nobody ever thought to look too closely, not even the people who had raised her.
The tour continued on through the remainder of the enormous house. A grand ballroom, unused and echoing, its chandeliers draped in protective cloth. A private study that Rosa mentioned, almost in passing, had once belonged to Damien's father. A wide terrace overlooking gardens that seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon in every direction.
"How long have you worked here, Rosa?" Silveria asked as they walked.
"Nearly twenty years now," Rosa said, something fond crossing her face. "I started when his mother was still alive, actually. I was barely older than you are now, fresh out of proper training, terrified out of my mind on my very first day."
"What was she like? His mother?"
"Warm," Rosa said simply. "Warmer than this house has properly felt in a very long time, if I'm being completely honest with you. She used to fill every single room with music, actual laughter. This whole house used to feel genuinely alive back then, in a way it simply doesn't anymore."
"What changed that?" Silveria asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.
"The accident changed everything," Rosa said quietly. "Damien was only ten years old at the time. His parents died instantly, from what I understand. His little sister, Amara, she didn't survive the hospital that same terrible night either, despite everyone's best efforts. Damien walked away from the crash with barely a scratch on him, physically speaking. But something inside him broke that particular night too, just as completely and irrevocably as anything else that was lost."
Silveria's chest tightened painfully at that. "He was only a child himself."
"He was," Rosa agreed softly. "But children often blame themselves for things far beyond their proper control, more often than most adults would ever properly realize. Damien was supposed to be watching his little sister carefully in the back seat that day, or so I've heard, though he's never once spoken about the details directly to me in all these years I've worked here."
"He talks about it like it happened to someone else entirely," Silveria said slowly, thinking back to the careful, distant way he had briefly discussed his parents' deaths just that morning. "Like he's reciting cold facts rather than actually remembering them properly."
"That's likely the only way he's ever found to properly survive carrying something that heavy for so many years," Rosa said wisely. "Grief that enormous, when you're that young, you either learn somehow to lock it carefully away somewhere very deep inside yourself, or it eventually swallows you whole."
That evening, back in her own quiet room, Silveria found herself back in the library entirely alone, pulling books down off the shelves almost at complete random, more genuinely interested in the surrounding quiet than in actually reading any particular one of them properly. She was halfway through flipping curiously through an old photo album she had accidentally discovered tucked carelessly behind a row of dusty novels when she heard soft, measured footsteps approaching quietly from somewhere behind her.
Damien stood in the doorway, watching her with an expression she genuinely couldn't quite manage to read at all.
"You found the album," he said quietly.
Silveria's stomach dropped immediately, suddenly worried she had overstepped some invisible line she hadn't properly known existed between them yet. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to go through your personal belongings without asking first—"
"It's fine," he said, crossing the room slowly to sit down across from her, an unexpected softness entering the careful gesture. "That's my mother there, in the blue dress. And that's my father standing beside her."
He pointed carefully to a faded photograph of a smiling young couple, arms wrapped warmly and affectionately around each other, standing together in front of a house considerably smaller and warmer looking than the enormous mansion Silveria now found herself living inside.
"They look genuinely happy together," she said softly, studying the old photograph carefully.
"They were," Damien said, his voice dropping quiet too now, careful, like he was handling something fragile and easily broken between his own two hands. "They died when I was still quite young. A car accident, as I imagine Rosa has already mentioned to you today."
"I'm so terribly sorry," Silveria said gently.
"It was a very long time ago now," he said, though something in his tone suggested the passage of time had done remarkably little to properly ease the weight of it.
"That doesn't necessarily mean it still doesn't hurt somewhere underneath everything else," she said quietly.
He looked over at her then, really looked at her properly, something shifting noticeably behind his careful, guarded eyes, like he genuinely hadn't expected her to understand that particular truth so completely and so quickly. "No," he admitted quietly. "It doesn't stop hurting. Not really. Not ever, if I'm being entirely honest about it."
They sat together in comfortable, companionable silence for a while after that admission, the old photo album still open between them on the low table, two complete strangers who had been forced together by other people's careless choices, slowly, carefully, beginning to find the very first fragile thread of something neither one of them had ever properly expected to find in each other, not in a single lifetime.
"I should let you rest," he said eventually, though he made no immediate move to actually stand up from the chair.
"You don't have to leave," she said, surprising herself with how much she meant it. "Unless you'd rather."
He considered that for a moment, something uncertain crossing his features, before he settled back slightly into his seat instead of rising. "A little longer, then," he said quietly, and they sat there together a while more, the quiet library settling comfortably around them as the evening light faded slowly outside the tall windows.