CHAPTER 18

Chapter 18

Damien's POV

Carter.

I said his name once in my head and let it sit there and felt the shape of it change from an " ally to a question mark in the space of about four seconds.

Sophia was already thinking it. I could see it in her face, that quiet focused recalibration she did when something shifted and she was updating every prior conclusion in real time.

"It might not be him," she said.

"It might not be," I said.

Neither of us believed that.

"Who else was in that estate tonight," she said. "Walk me through it. Everyone."

"Us. Remy. Carter." I paused. "The portrait of Victoria's grandmother but I'm ruling her out."

Sophia's mouth did the thing that was almost a smile even when everything was terrible. I filed that away because I was apparently filing everything about her now without meaning to.

"The staff," she said. "Were there staff in the building?"

I stopped.

The Vale mansion ran a skeleton night staff. Two people minimum. We had moved through the building focused entirely on Carter and Remy and the meeting room and none of us had thought about who else was in the building because we hadn't needed to.

"Someone saw us," I said.

"Someone saw me specifically," she said. "Marcus's filing says I removed evidence from the Vale property. Which means whoever the witness is they're claiming I took something out of that building tonight."

"Did you?"

She looked at me.

"Did you take anything from that building Sophia," I said. Not accusatory. Just needing to know the shape of what we were dealing with.

"My dignity," she said. "And a piece of paper with your father's address on it that Carter gave us."

I looked at her.

She looked back.

"The address," I said slowly. "Carter handed you a piece of paper with Richard's location and you carried it out of the Vale mansion."

"Yes," she said. "But that's Carter's document not a Vale document. Marcus can't claim…"

"Marcus can claim whatever he wants," I said. "The question is whether a judge believes it long enough to issue an injunction that freezes our ability to act while he moves on whatever Diana told him about Chenworth Analytics."

Sophia sat down on the counter I had just vacated and looked at the ceiling.

"He's buying time," she said.

"Yes."

"Diana told him about the evidence my parents left. He doesn't know what it is or where it is but he knows it exists and he knows I'm about to find it." She looked at me. "So he files something that puts me legally in a defensive position. Forces us to spend the next forty-eight hours dealing with lawyers instead of going to see Mei."

"Yes," I said.

"That's actually smart," she said. "I hate that that's actually smart."

"Marcus isn't stupid," I said. "He's weak and he's cruel but he's not stupid. He married you didn't he?"

She looked at me.

"That came out wrong," I said.

"No it didn't," she said. Something warm in her eyes despite everything. "It came out exactly right actually."

I crossed the kitchen and stood in front of her and she was sitting on the counter which put us at the same height for once and her eyes were level with mine and close and the one in the morning quiet was still around us even with Zane's messages sitting on the screen.

"We need to call Elijah," she said softly.

"Yes," I said. Not moving.

"And wake up Dominic," she said.

"Yes," I said. Still not moving.

"And figure out what to do about Carter," she said.

"Sophia."

"What?"

"In a minute," I said.

She looked at me for a second. Then she put both hands on either side of my face the way I had done to her, mirroring it back, and looked at me with those eyes that saw everything and hid very little.

"In a minute," she agreed softly.

I kissed her once. Brief and certain. The kind that wasn't asking anything, just saying something that didn't have words yet.

Then I picked up my phone and called Elijah.

He answered on the second ring which meant he had been awake which meant Zane had already called him which meant my brothers operated as a unit even at one in the morning without being asked to.

Twenty-one years of practice.

"I know about the injunction," Elijah said. "I'm already pulling the filing."

"How bad," I said.

"Annoying rather than dangerous," Elijah said. "The witness's claim is thin. Without knowing who the witness is I can't assess the full exposure but Marcus moved fast which usually means he moved sloppily." A pause. "There's something else."

"Tell me."

"The injunction was filed by Vale family lawyers," Elijah said. "But the funding for the legal action. The retainer paid tonight. It didn't come from Marcus's accounts."

I waited.

"It came from Alesta Holdings," Elijah said. "The Monaco company. Richard's company."

Sophia was watching my face. She could read enough from my side of the call to know the shape of what was coming.

"Richard is funding Marcus's legal action against Sophia," I said.

"Yes," Elijah said. "Which means Diana's email to Marcus wasn't just a tip. It was a coordination signal. They're moving together now. Diana, Richard, and Marcus. All three."

I looked at Sophia sitting on my kitchen counter at one thirty in the morning with her hands in her lap and her eyes steady and her aunt's phone number in her recent calls and evidence somewhere in the city that three very dangerous people were now racing to find before she did.

"Elijah," I said. "How fast can we move on the injunction?"

"I can have a counter filing ready by six AM," he said. "But Damien. If their witness is credible and a judge agrees to extend the injunction it could freeze Sophia's movement for seventy-two hours."

Seventy-two hours.

Long enough for Diana to find Mei. Long enough for Marcus to get to whatever Chenworth Analytics was hiding. Long enough for the whole thing to collapse before it had a chance to be used.

"Work faster than six," I said. "I need this done by four."

"Damien it's one thirty in the.."

"Elijah."

A pause. Then the sound of a chair moving and a laptop opening.

"Four," Elijah said. "I'll try."

I hung up and looked at Sophia.

"We need to go to Mei tonight," she said. Before I could say it.

"Yes," I said.

"Not tomorrow. Tonight. Right now before the injunction can be extended."

"Yes," I said.

"Which means we leave in the next thirty minutes."

"Which means we need to tell Dominic," I said.

She looked at the ceiling briefly. "He's going to want to come."

"He's going to insist on coming," I said. "The question is whether we let him or whether we move faster without him."

She thought about it for exactly four seconds.

"Without him," she said. "Dominic in a room with my aunt Mei is a lot. She'll shut down. She needs to feel safe not managed."

"Agreed," I said. "Which means we also need to deal with Carter before we leave."

As if the name had summoned him, footsteps in the corridor.

We both looked at the kitchen doorway.

Carter appeared in it looking like a man who hadn't slept and wasn't going to and knew exactly what conversation was coming.

He looked at us. At the phones in our hands. At the specific quality of the silence in the kitchen.

"The injunction," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"I didn't tell him," Carter said. "I need you to know that before anything else. I did not contact Marcus. I did not tell him Sophia was in that building tonight."

"Then who did," Sophia said.

Carter looked at her steadily. "There was a woman. Night staff. She was in the kitchen corridor when we walked through. She looked at Sophia and I saw her reach for her phone." He paused. "I should have flagged it immediately. I didn't because I was focused on getting Remy out and I'm sorry."

Silence.

"A plant," Sophia said slowly. "Victoria had someone on the night staff who reported directly to Marcus."

"Yes," Carter said. "I think so."

I looked at him.

He met my gaze without flinching and without performing innocence. Just steady and tired and completely present in the way of someone who had been carrying something heavy for four years and was done pretending it wasn't heavy.

"We're going to see Sophia's aunt," I said. "Tonight. Right now."

Carter nodded.

"You're staying here," I said. "You're going to sit with Dominic and you're going to tell him everything. Every detail of the last four years. Everything Diana said, everything you moved, every account you touched." I looked at him. "And you're going to tell him about Richard. Where he is. What Diana has on him. All of it."

Carter was quiet for a moment.

"He's going to be angry," Carter said.

"Yes," I said. "He's going to be very angry."

"I know," Carter said. "I've been waiting four years to let him be."

Something in the kitchen shifted slightly. Not forgiveness. Not yet. Something earlier than that. The thing that came before forgiveness when someone stopped running from the conversation.

Sophia slid off the counter and looked at Carter.

"For what it's worth," she said. "The texts helped. All of them. You pointed us in the right direction every time it mattered." She paused. "That counts."

Carter looked at her for a moment.

"Your mother," he said quietly. "She would have done the same thing. Seen the person underneath the mistake." He paused. "She was like that."

Sophia went very still.

"You knew her," she said.

"Briefly," Carter said. "Through your father. Years ago before any of this. She came to one meeting, a legal thing, and she sat in the corner and didn't say much, and then at the end she said the one thing that changed the entire direction of the conversation." He looked at Sophia. "You do the same thing. It's striking."

Sophia looked at him for a long moment.

Then she nodded once and picked up her jacket from the chair and looked at me.

"Ready," she said.

We left through the side entrance. Just us. No Zane, no Elijah, no brothers. The city at two in the morning doing its quieter version of itself, less traffic, longer shadows, the kind of empty that made everywhere feel further away.

I drove.

Sophia sat beside me with the address for Mei pulled up on her phone and her legs tucked under her on the seat in a way that suggested she had forgotten she was in someone else's car, which was the most comfortable she had looked since I met her.

"She said your mother would have loved all this," I said. "The Blacks, the Vales, burning things down."

"She would have," Sophia said. "She had this thing about injustice. It made her physically restless. Like she couldn't be still while something wrong was happening in her vicinity." She looked out the window. "I used to think I was nothing like her. I was always the calm one. The one who kept the peace."

"You're not the keep the peace one," I said.

"I know that now," she said. "I was just the one who hadn't found something worth fighting for yet."

I looked at the road.

"Damien," she said.

"Yes."

"Thank you for driving," she said. "I know that sounds small given everything but." She paused. "Thank you for just. Being the person who drives."

I looked at her briefly.

"Always," I said.

She smiled. Not the composed one. The real one, the one that started somewhere deeper than her face and made the car feel warmer than it was.

We drove through the city and the night was quiet around us and somewhere ahead of us an aunt was waiting with something a dead woman had left for her daughter to find when she was finally safe enough to receive it.

And behind us, three people were moving fast toward the same thing.

We needed to get there first.

We pulled onto Mei's street at two twenty-three in the morning.

Every light in her house was on.

I looked at Sophia.

She looked at the house.

"She's been awake," Sophia said quietly. "She said come tomorrow. But every light is on."

I looked at the house again.

Front door slightly open.

The specific kind of open that wasn't an invitation.

"Sophia," I said carefully.

"I see it," she said. Her voice had gone very quiet.

I put my hand out and stopped her from opening the car door.

"Wait," I said.

"Damien my aunt is in there.."

"Wait," I said again. Looking at the house. At the lights. At the door. At the car parked two houses down that had been running long enough for condensation to form on the windows despite the cold.

Someone was already here.

Someone had gotten to Mei before us.

And every light being on at two in the morning meant either Mei had known they were coming.

Or she hadn't had the chance to turn them off.