One Night Stand, Eight Surprises: Pampered by My CEO Husband --- - Chapter 92: Chapter 92

The attic smelled like cedar and dust. Iris had crept up there with quiet footsteps, clutching her sketchbook under one arm and her heart on her sleeve. The late afternoon sun filtered in through the circular window, casting warm, golden slants over forgotten furniture and unopened boxes.
She wasn’t supposed to be up here. Not without asking. But something had pulled her. A whisper. A feeling.
She was searching for canvas boards—something to paint on that didn’t feel like school paper. But what she found instead, buried beneath a thick stack of design portfolios and old records, was a leather-bound sketchbook.
Her father’s.
The moment she opened it, the air shifted.
Every page was a story. Damien had been a gifted illustrator—a talent he rarely showed the public. It wasn’t business. It was private. Sacred. His sketches were precise, fluid, deeply human.
There were renderings of the kids as toddlers, sleeping on couches, fighting over juice boxes, chasing butterflies. There were landscapes from vacations—beaches, forests, the view from the mountain house balcony.
And there, in the center of the book, was Arielle.
Drawn in charcoal.
Head tilted in laughter, hand mid-gesture, eyes lit with something only Damien could’ve captured. It was her—before the grief, before the empire, before the weight of the world sat on her shoulders.
Young. Bright. Unbreakable.
Iris ran her fingers along the sketch, her throat tightening.
The tears came quietly, like shadows slipping through cracks.
She clutched the book to her chest, curling in on herself on the attic floor, trying not to sob too loudly. The ache for her father was an old wound, but this sketch tore it open again—because it reminded her of who he had seen in her mother.
Later that night, Arielle was walking through the hallway when she noticed the light under Iris’s door. She knocked gently.
No answer.
She opened the door and found Iris sitting on the carpet, surrounded by paint jars, brushes, and a half-finished canvas. Arielle moved closer—and paused.
It was a portrait.
Of herself.
Painted with the same tilt, the same laugh, the same eyes Damien had drawn. But this wasn’t a copy—it was Iris’s voice overlaid on Damien’s memory. It had more color. More softness. More ache.
“You found his book,” Arielle said quietly.
Iris nodded, eyes red.
Arielle knelt beside her, brushing a strand of paint-streaked hair away from her daughter’s cheek. “He used to draw me when he couldn’t find the words.”
“I miss him,” Iris whispered. “So much it hurts. I didn’t think it still would.”
“I know,” Arielle said, pulling her close. “I miss him every day.”
Iris leaned into her. “Do you think he’d be proud of me?”
Arielle kissed the top of her head. “He already was. He used to say you had a fire in your chest and color in your blood.”
“I don’t want to forget what he looked like.”
“Then keep painting,” Arielle whispered. “Paint him. Paint us. Paint everything.”
They sat together long after the canvas dried.
Not as mother and daughter.
But as two artists.
Two hearts still healing.
And in the silence, they both found something sacred:
A way to remember without breaking.
A way to carry love forward without letting it sink them.