What the camera saw

Anastasia didn’t have to wonder too much as the truth found her.

A file of photos landed in her inbox three days after she’d confronted Damien about the missed dinners, taken from across the street, but unmistakable. Damien, at the door of a the penthouse. Beside him, was Lucas it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see how suspicious they were holding hands… Anastasia couldn’t believe her eyes, then she flipped to the next picture and she saw them kissing.

She stared at it a long time.

Then she drove there herself.

She didn’t call ahead. Didn’t plan what she’d say. The doorman, who’d waved her through a hundred times for a hundred reasons, let her up without question, and she let herself in with the emergency code Damien had given her years ago some old habit of trust that hadn’t caught up yet to what she already knew.

They weren’t expecting anyone. That much was obvious when she opened the door to see them in bed stark naked, Damien on Lucas kissing him while stroking his dick.

She didn’t scream. She wanted to. What came out instead was quieter, worse a stillness that scared even her. “Fifteen years,” she said, to no one in particular, to the room, to the version of her life ending in real time. “Fifteen years, Damien”.

“And you choose a dick?”

Both men jumped off the bed with Lucas wrapping himself up in the duvet, while Damien just tried saying whatever explanation he thought would fix it.

She turned and left.

None of them ever found out who sold the photo, it didn’t matter by Friday it was everywhere.

VOSS HEIR’S SECRET AFFAIR WITH A MAN!!!.

Lucas watched it happen from his own apartment, phone buzzing itself off the counter, his name spreading through headlines he’d never agreed to be part of. They didn’t call him an artist. They called him “the painter,” like his profession was the scandal instead of an afterthought to it. Photos he didn’t know existed arriving, leaving the media definitively built their story.

His gallery called, careful and apologetic, using words like “reputational exposure” and “postponing,” like three years of work could be shelved being gay wasn’t the problem it was being with someone like Damien Voss.

Damien called four times. Lucas let every one go to voicemail… he wasn’t angry but he just couldn’t deal with everything now. he also didn’t know what either of them could say that would make this smaller than it already was.

He sat with his phone dark in his hand, certain he’d just lost everything he’d built. Certain Damien was about to lose far more.

It didn’t take long before Victor Brooke Anastasia’s father showed up

He was in

He was in Nick’s office before Damien even made it downstairs and Damien walked to the office not even knowing what to make of everything.

“Your son,” Victor said, not looking at Damien addressing his father like he were a liability under discussion rather than a person present, “has made my daughter a public joke. Fifteen years of loyalty between our families, and this is how it ends.”

“Victor…”

“The joint development deal is finished.” He was already moving for the door. “Every contract with your name on it, I’m pulling. And I’ll make sure every partner we share knows exactly why.”

Damien’s father waited until the door shut before turning on him, he loses control, worse than shouting. “Do you understand what you’ve done?!!Brooke’s contracts are a third of this year’s projected revenue. The board is going to want answers. And you’re going to stand there and tell me it was worth it?”

No son of mine is gay and you won’t do that!

Damien didn’t have an answer that would satisfy him. He wasn’t sure he had one that satisfied himself.

“I’m not sorry for him,” he said, quiet but steady. “I’m sorry for how it happened.

His father looked at him like he no longer recognized his own son.

“Then you’d better hope,” he said, “you’re prepared to lose everything to keep him.”