Chapter 6 - Unspoken Promises
The silence left in Levi’s wake was thick and heavy, punctuated only by the distant hum of the estate’s air filtration system.
Caprice stood up slowly, setting the files down on the desk. She walked over to Diamond's chair.
He was shaking slightly—not from fear, but from the immense, suffocating rage that still burned through his upper body. His hands gripped the armrests so hard the dark leather groaned under the strain.
"Diamond," she said softly, using his name without the formal prefix for the very first time.
He didn't look up. "He was right about one thing."
Caprice stopped beside him. "About what?"
"I couldn't stand up," Diamond rasped, his voice thick with raw, ugly pain. "I sat there while my own second in command insulted me in my own house, and I couldn't even stand up to put my hands around his throat."
Caprice knelt down beside his wheelchair. She didn't hesitate. She reached out and placed her warm, soft hands directly over his white knuckled fists.
Diamond stiffened at the touch, his dark eyes snapping to her face.
"Don't," he muttered. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" Caprice asked gently, her thumbs rubbing small, soothing circles over his bruised knuckles until his grip slowly began to loosen.
"Like I'm something broken."
"You aren't broken, Diamond," she said, her voice steady and fiercely sincere. "You're angry. You're wounded. But you are the strongest man I have ever met in my life."
Diamond stared down at her. The intense, deadly anger in his eyes slowly melted, replaced by a deep, aching vulnerability that terrified him far more than any assassin's bullet ever could.
"Why are you still here, Caprice?" he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper in the quiet study. "I paid off your mother's care. You have no debt left. You could leave tonight and never look back at this bloody place."
Caprice looked up into his dark, tortured eyes. She didn't pull her hands away.
"I tried to leave three days ago," she admitted softly, a small, sad smile touching her lips. "I got off my shift, walked to the bus stop, and realized I didn't want to go back to a room where you weren't talking."
Diamond’s breath hitched.
He reached out with his right hand, his long, scarred fingers gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face, his thumb lingering against the soft curve of her cheek.
"It's dangerous here," he warned her, his touch incredibly gentle despite his words. "My world is ugly, Caprice."
"My world was ugly before I met you," she replied, leaning slightly into his warm palm. "At least here, I don't feel invisible."
Diamond pulled her up gently until she was sitting on the wide leather armrest of his wheelchair. He pulled her against his broad chest, burying his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweet, simple scent of soap and warm skin.
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For the first time in two years, Diamond Kelly didn't feel like a prisoner inside his own skin. He felt alive.
And as Caprice wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him tightly in the dark study, an unspoken promise took root between them—a bond forged in exhaustion, sustained by dignity, and sealed in the quiet darkness of the night.
