Chapter 4 Why I Don't Love

Aurelia

Love was never taken from me.

It was taught out of me-slowly, methodically, the way you train something wild until it learns not to hope.

I grew up in a house where silence was currency and affection was a weakness you paid for later. My father believed emotions dulled the mind. My mother believed endurance was the same thing as strength. Between them, I learned early that wanting was dangerous.

I was seven the first time I understood this.

I had brought home a drawing-crude lines, uneven shapes, but it was the first thing I'd ever been proud of. I placed it carefully on my father's desk, hands trembling, heart loud in my chest.

He didn't look at it.

He didn't have to.

"If you want approval," he said, eyes still on his papers, "earn it."

I stood there for a long time after that, staring at the edge of his desk, waiting for something else. A smile. A word. Anything.

Nothing came.

From that day on, I stopped offering pieces of myself freely. I learned to wait. To calculate. To observe what was rewarded and what was punished. Success was praised. Silence was expected. Tears were met with disdain.

My mother was softer-only in theory.

She loved me the way people love obligations. Properly. Carefully. Without warmth. She hugged me when someone was watching. She corrected me when no one was. When I cried at night, she told me crying wouldn't change the outcome-only my reputation.

"You must never need anyone," she said once, brushing my hair with brisk efficiency. "Need gives people power over you."

I believed her.

By twelve, I was top of my class. By fifteen, I was negotiating allowances like contracts. By eighteen, I had already decided I would never marry for love, never hinge my future on another person's mercy.

Love, I learned, is an open door.

And open doors invite theft.

I watched my parents' marriage with clinical detachment. It wasn't violent. It wasn't loud. It was far worse-cold, strategic, transactional. Dinners eaten in silence. Touches exchanged only when necessary. Smiles worn in public like well-tailored suits.

They were partners. Not lovers.

And even that partnership cracked.

When my father lost control-of the board, of his reputation, of the narrative-he turned inward. Became sharp where he had once been distant. My mother stayed, not because she loved him, but because leaving would have meant vulnerability.

I saw what love did to people who pretended it didn't matter.

It hollowed them out.

So I built something else.

Control became my language. Excellence became my shield. I learned to dominate rooms so I'd never be small inside one again. I learned that respect lasts longer than affection and fear is cleaner than devotion.

Desire, though...

Desire is different.

Desire doesn't ask you to be seen-it only asks you to feel. It can be indulged and dismissed. Controlled. Managed. I allow myself that much. One night. No promises. No future tense.

Love demands surrender.

Love demands risk.

Love demands that you trust someone not to use your softest parts as leverage.

I refuse.

Because I know exactly what happens when you hand someone your heart and expect them to protect it.

They don't.

They teach you why you never should have given it to them in the first place.

That is why I keep my world sharp-edged and precise. Why I negotiate pleasure but not permanence. Why I let men into my bed but never into my life.

I learned to sleep with my back to the door.

Not because anyone ever broke in-but because vigilance became instinct. Vulnerability was a luxury reserved for people who could afford disappointment. I couldn't. Not then. Not ever.

At sixteen, I watched my mother sign away a piece of herself at the dining table.

My father slid a document across polished wood, his voice calm, precise. A non-disclosure agreement. About his affairs. About the money. About the future she would remain silent through.

She didn't cry.

She picked up the pen, read every line, and signed.

That was the moment love finally lost its shape for me. It wasn't tenderness or sacrifice. It was endurance dressed up as loyalty. It was silence mistaken for strength.

Later that night, she knocked on my bedroom door.

"You'll understand one day," she said, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from my sleeve. "Stability matters more than feelings."

I looked at her and saw a woman who had learned to live without wanting. Who had folded herself into something smaller to survive.

I promised myself I would never do that.

I would never shrink.

Never wait.

Never stay where I was not chosen fully.

So I chose myself.

I left home at eighteen with a scholarship, a suitcase, and a list of rules I never broke. I didn't date seriously. I didn't lean. I didn't let people see me tired, or hurt, or uncertain. I learned that ambition could be warmer than love if you held it close enough.

By the time Blackwood Global was born, I was already fluent in solitude.

People mistake that for loneliness.

It isn't.

Loneliness implies absence. What I cultivated was distance-intentional, protective, absolute. Distance keeps you intact. Distance keeps you sharp.

Still... distance doesn't quiet memory.

There are nights-rare, unwelcome-when I remember being small, standing in rooms too large for my voice. When I remember wanting someone to notice me without having to earn it.

Those nights pass.

I don't indulge them.

Because indulgence is a gateway emotion. One crack and everything spills.

That's why Luca unsettles me.

He doesn't try to breach my defenses. He doesn't poke at the walls I've built. He doesn't demand intimacy disguised as curiosity. He simply... exists. Steady. Attentive. Present.

As if my rules don't intimidate him.

As if my distance isn't a warning.

As if he sees the girl I trained out of myself and isn't afraid of what she might want.

That kind of seeing is dangerous.

I pour myself a glass of whiskey and stand by the window of my apartment, city lights blurring into something almost soft. My reflection stares back at me-composed, elegant, unyielding.

The woman who never needed love.

The woman who built an empire instead.

I take a slow sip, letting the burn remind me where control lives-in restraint, in choice, in never letting your guard slip just because someone makes standing still feel less lonely.

Love is a loss of leverage.

And I have spent my entire life ensuring no one ever had the power to leave me empty-handed again.

So if my heart beats a little harder when I think of him...

If my chest tightens when I imagine wanting more than I should...

It means nothing.

Desire is temporary.

Attachment is optional.

Love is a risk I will never take.

I turn away from the window, set the glass down untouched, and breathe.

Tomorrow, I will wake up composed. Untouchable. In control.

And whatever this feeling is-

I will master it.

Like everything else.