Chapter 4 Clash of the Titans

The contract, signed weeks prior, trembled slightly in Sasha's fingers as she sat curled on the living room couch – a sleek leather affair. Countless times she'd read it, every line, every stipulation, etched in her mind. Yet each reading ushered in a new tide of bitterness. Heavier today, though. The words felt colder. The air hung thick with a strange tension. She couldn't quite get rid of the feeling that something, or someone, was about to break her brittle composure.

The penthouse was eerily silent, so quiet that the faint hum of the building's electricity was nearly deafening. However, it was short-lived. The silence was broken by the rhythmic, sharp clack of heels on marble. Sasha looked up, expecting Peter, who was usually uninterested, or maybe Damon, who rarely made an announcement.

But it wasn't them.

A tall woman with long black hair tied back in a high ponytail as shiny as ink, and a black sheath-dress that could have walked a runway, stood without speaking at the front door. She took up space and the attitude in the air surrounding her dripped with contempt.

"Who are you?" Sasha asked, her tone firm but tentative.

The woman's red lipstick curled into an empty smile. "Vanessa. Damon's assistant." She spoke in clipped phrases and precise words. She sized Sasha up slowly, expression neutral except for the bitterness creeping around her eyes. "Here all the time, I didn't think you'd be so... comfortable."

Sasha's spine stiffened. "Is there a problem?"

Vanessa stepped into the house, heels clicking like gunshots in the stillness. "Depends. Are you under the impression you get time off from this? Because if so, you have misunderstood the assignment."

Sasha dropped the contract on the table and slowly pulled herself back on one elbow, "And what, may I ask, do you think I'm doing?"

Vanessa's smile evaporated. "Let's not play games here; you are here for one reason and we both know it. It's not like Damon's going to kick you to the curb, don't confuse that with being important."

The hostility between them was almost like a living thing, it pulsed and grew, choking the air.

"You don't really know me," Sasha replied calmly. "So don't act like you know me or what I think. You need to lighten up."

Vanessa cocked her head to the side, perhaps contemplating if Sasha was even worth her time. "I know your type. Fresh faced, doe-eyed, stumbling into some fairy land. But you are really just a file. Temporary." Sasha moved further into her personal space, her hands clenched at her side. "If you're done making your little points, you can leave now."

When I quit school, what I had pictured of someone flipping the table, and launching a clipboard across the room happened, both women were still for a heartbeat.

And before Sasha could breath, Vanessa shoved her.

Stunned, she stumbled back and landed like a ton of bricks on the hard polished floor. The shot of cold marble stung her skin, and the embarrassment stung way more.

A smug expression studied Sasha from above. "Pathetic," Vanessa mumbled.

Sasha scrambled to her feet, cheeks flushed, anger swirling in her chest. "You think you can touch me and walk away clean? You've got a job from Damon?"

Before anyone could speak again, some voice cut through the air like a knife.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Damon was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, with no discernible expression to his face. The two women both looked to Damon, but his eyes were hard and narrowed as they moved carefully between the two who moments before were nearly fighting, but he lingered on Sasha, just a little too long.

Vanessa was first to recover. She flicked the switch to her polished trained self. "I found Sasha uncooperative," she began. "I had a message to give to her, but she was hostile, and it escalated."

Sasha clenched her jaw. She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"That's not true," she said, trying to keep her tone calm. "She put her hands on me, Damon. I didn't put a finger on her."

Damon's expression gave little away. He didn't show surprise, if he was. He turned his attention back and forth between the two of them and then there was a flicker in his expression, maybe doubt, but it went away quickly.

"What happened?" he asked Sasha, his tone low, flat.

"Yeh," she said. "That is exactly what happened."

But as soon as the words left her mouth she knew they fell on nothing but indifference. Damon was already miles away inwardly, behind whatever cold logic governed his actions. His silence was more damning than any accusation.

He turned to Vanessa. "Leave us."

Vanessa didn't bother to argue. She smiled, or rather, sneered, and gave Sasha one last look filled with whatever unspoken threats her eyes could conjure. "Just wanted to make sure she understood her place," she said, before gliding out of the room with her heel clicks echoing loudly behind her.

Once the door closed, the silence returned, albeit even thicker this time.

Sasha remained standing, hands balled into little fists so fiercely her knuckles were white. He didn't say anything for a while, he just stood there quiet and stared at her. His expression was ice cold.

"This isn't something that should be this hard. You're making this more difficult than it has to be." He spoke finally.

Sasha laughed a dry laugh. "I am not the one making things complicated. I was perfectly fine before she marched in here with her entitled attitude and knocked me to the ground."

"You are here for one reason," he said blankly. "This is strictly business. Nothing related to you or I can be taken personally."

"I don't care if this is business or not, she had no right to put her hands on me."

Damon didn't react. "You are here to carry my child. That's it. Do not confuse the particulars of the contract with anything more."

His words punched the air out of her lungs. All the hope that remained in her body - the slightest glimmer that perhaps he cared even a smidgen - extinguished.

"I don't...Do you even see me?" She asked.

He didn't answer. He didn't need to.

That was answer enough.

She layer on her bed staring up at the ceiling. Even though the room was quiet and still, her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. Vanessa's cruelty, Damon's cold dismissal, the gnawing weight of being treated like a transaction-they all played on loop in her mind.

The woman Damon trusted had physically attacked her. And instead of outrage, he had offered indifference. Instead of protection, he gave silence.

She had signed the contract with eyes wide open, knowing it wouldn't be easy. Still, she hadn't been prepared for this. This feeling of being caged, locked up in someone's life. The feeling of being invisible and expendable.

Her vision blurred with tears but she blinked them back . She wasn't going to be weak. She couldn't afford to.

Somewhere deep inside her, something shifted. It wasn't loud or dramatic. It was quiet, resolute.

She wasn't going to let them break her.

Not Vanessa.

Not Damon.

Not the suffocating contract that bound her here.

If she was a pawn, then she would learn to play the game better than any of them.