Marcus

Damien was in his office at 6 a.m. when the email came in.

The subject line was blank. The sender was a G***l address he did not recognize. The body of the email was a single sentence.

"Three years is a long time to keep quiet. I would like to renegotiate."

Attached was a photograph.

A photograph of Damien, three years ago, shoving Aria through the front door of the penthouse. Security footage, obviously. The kind taken from the camera mounted in the private elevator lobby. The kind that was supposed to have been deleted as a matter of building policy.

Except someone had kept a copy.

Damien stared at the photograph for a long time.

In the image, Aria's face was turned toward the camera. She was crying. His hand was in the small of her back, pushing her out. Her mascara was smeared. Her dress was soaked through. You could see the divorce papers clutched in her fist.

It was the single worst image of his entire life.

And someone had it.

He called Nathan.

"I need you in my office. Now."

"It is six in the morning."

"Now."

Nathan arrived in twelve minutes in sweatpants and a button down shirt buttoned crooked. He looked at the photograph on Damien's screen. He said a word Damien had never heard him say before.

"How do we know it is real?"

"Because I remember that night better than I remember my own birthday."

"Okay. Who sent it?"

"I have a guess."

"Marcus Greer."

"Marcus Greer."

Nathan sat down slowly.

"Marcus Greer was the private investigator Vanessa paid to deliver the fabricated evidence three years ago. After the Times article ran last month, Marcus lost everything. His firm shut down. His license was revoked. His wife left him. He filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago. I have been tracking him."

"Why."

"Because men like Marcus, when they have nothing left to lose, get creative."

Damien walked to the window.

He thought about Marcus. He had met the man once, in the weeks after the divorce. A thin, hungry looking man in a suit that did not quite fit. Sharp eyes. The kind of eyes that noticed the cost of your watch before they noticed your face. Marcus had come to deliver a final report. He had sat in this same office, in the same chair Nathan was sitting in now, and had handed Damien a folder full of lies and taken a check for two hundred thousand dollars.

Damien had never wondered, at the time, whether the man was telling the truth. He had been too angry to wonder.

The cost of not wondering, it turned out, was everything.

He turned back to the desk.

Damien scrubbed a hand down his face.

"What does he want."

"Look at the email. He says he wants to renegotiate. Which means he wants money. Marcus always wanted money."

"How much."

"He has not said yet. But whatever number he names, he is going to threaten to release that photograph to a tabloid if you do not pay him."

Damien looked at the image again. The Aria in the image was twenty two years old. She was bleeding internally even though nobody could see it. She was walking into the single worst night of her life.

If that photograph went public, she would have to live it again. In front of everyone. Page Six. The Post. Every gossip site. The woman the world had just started to know as Seraphina Kane would be dragged back into the gutter she had climbed out of, and it would be his face next to hers in every single article.

He could not let that happen.

"We are not paying him."

"Damien."

"We are not paying him. Because if we pay him once, he comes back every six months for the rest of our lives. Men like Marcus do not go away when you feed them. They multiply."

"Then what."

Damien stared at the photograph.

"I am going to tell Aria."

"That is a bad idea."

"She deserves to know."

"She is going to blame you for this."

"Yes. She is. And she is right to. This is a consequence of what I did three years ago. The least I can do is own it."

He closed the laptop.

Walked to the window. Looked at the city waking up.

"Book me a flight to London."

"Damien."

"Tonight."

"She just left yesterday."

"I know."

"She is going to be furious."

"I know."

"Damien. Are you sure."

"No. But I am going anyway."

Nathan looked at him for a long moment.

"You are a different man."

"What."

"Six months ago. A year ago. You would have fired the email to legal and made it someone else's problem. You would have had five lawyers between you and this woman. You are flying to London at six in the morning to tell her the news in person."

"And."

"And I like this version of you better."

Damien did not answer.

He just stared out the window at a city that was beginning to wake up, and he thought about Aria, and he thought about Luna, and he thought about the long road that was still between him and the thing he wanted.

Nathan picked up his coat.

"I will book the flight. Wheels up in two hours."

"Thank you."

"Do not thank me. Fix it."

Nathan left.

Damien sat at his desk alone, and he looked at the photograph on his screen one more time, and he closed his laptop, and he went to pack a bag.