The Woman Who Died

Chapter Six

She tried. She lied on her back and stares at the ceiling and tells herself the phone call was nothing. A prank. Someone with too much free time and a blocked number who somehow knew her name and the word bond and the fact that Damien Wolfe had a woman in his life before her.

Before her?.

She sits up. Turns the lamp on. Opens her laptop.

It is two forty-seven in the morning.

She types the name Isla Vane into the search bar.

The results load and she leans forward and the tiredness falls away completely.

There is not a lot. That is the first thing she notices. For a woman connected to one of the most talked about CEOs in Atlanta there is almost nothing. A social media profile that has not been updated in four years. A mention in a society column from five years ago at some kind of fundraiser, her name listed beside Damien's with no further comment. One photograph in that column. A woman with dark hair and a quiet smile standing near the edge of a group photo, half turned away from the camera.

And then one more thing.

A death notice.

Short. Plain. The kind that families put in when they do not want questions. Isla Vane, aged twenty nine. Passed away peacefully. Private family service. No cause listed. No further details.

Four years ago.

Zara reads it three times. Then she opened a new tab and typed: Isla Vane cause of death.

Nothing.

She tried: Isla Vane Damien Wolfe.

Still nothing. Just the society column again and a secondhand mention in a business profile of Damien that refers to him as famously private in his personal life.

Famously private.

She closed the laptop. Sits in the lamplight with her knees pulled up to her chest.

A twenty nine year old woman. Connected to Damien. Died with no explanation and barely a trace left behind.

The voice on the phone said: ask him what happened to the last woman he bonded with.

She thinks about Damien in his office. The stillness of him. The way he looks at her like she is the only thing in the room worth looking at. The way he said eventually like it was a promise.

She thinks about the word bond.

She thinks about Isla Vane's quiet smile at the edge of a photograph and her name in a death notice with no cause and no questions welcome.

She couldn't take her mind off everything after all that.

She arrives at WolfeGroup at eight fifty the next morning looking completely fine.

She had learned over the years that looking fine is a skill. You wear the right thing. You walk at the right pace. make eye contact first and let other people look away before you do. She built a business on walking into rooms where she did not belong yet and making them believe she did.

She walks to her conference room, sets up her boards, opens her laptop and starts on the seating layout for the investor dinner.

She lasted forty minutes before Priya knocked.

"Mr. Wolfe wants to know if you have time for a quick check-in. His words. Quick check-in."

Zara looked up.

"Tell him I will come to him."

Priya blink's. Most people do not go to Damien. Damien comes to them or the meeting happens in a neutral room. Priya opens her mouth. Close it. Nods and leaves.

Zara closed her laptop and went.

He is at his desk when she walks in. He looks up and she watches his face do the thing it always does, that quick read, like he is taking inventory of her in under a second.

Whatever he finds makes his expression shift by a fraction.

He knows something is wrong. She can see it. She has no idea how he can tell from across a room but he can and she files that away for later.

"Sit down," he said.

"I will stand. This will not take long."

He is quiet. Watching her.

She puts both hands flat on the desk in front of him and looked him directly in the eye and said:

"Who is Isla Vane?"

The room went silent.

He did not flinch,nor look away. But something moved behind his eyes, something deep and old and painful, and she felt the weight of it from across the desk.

"Where did you hear that name?" His voice was completely level.

"Someone called me last night. Unknown number. And told me to ask you what happened to the last woman you bonded with. I looked her up. I found a death notice and nothing else."

The silence stretches.

"Sit down, Zara."

He used her first name. He has never used her first name before.

He stood up and walked to the window, the same window he was standing at the very first time she saw him. He was quiet for long enough that she almost spoke. Then he said:

"Isla was someone I cared about. Four years ago she died. She was twenty nine years old and she was healthy and then she was not and I could not stop it."

His voice did not break. But it carried that particular weight of words that have never been said out loud to another person before.

"How did she die?" Zara asks. Quietly. No pressure behind it.

He turned from the window.

"That is a longer answer than I can give you right now. But I need you to know it was not because of me. Not directly."

"Not directly?."

"It is complicated."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

She studied him. The line of his jaw. The way he holds himself like he is braced for something.

"Someone called me with a blocked number to ask me that question," she says. "Someone who knew her name and knew about the bond and knew my phone number. That is not a prank caller."

"No. It is not."

"Do you know who it was?"

He looks at her for a moment. Then:

"I have a strong idea."

"Victor," she says.

He did not confirm it.Neither did he deny it . He just held her gaze and the answer was in the space between them.

"I need you to be careful," he said. "I need you to tell me if he contacts you again. By phone, in person, any way at all."

"I need you to tell me the full truth," she said. "Not eventually. Soon."

He looked at her for a long time.

"Soon," he said. And this time it sounds like a real promise.

She stood up. Picked up her folder. almost at the door when he called her name again.

"Zara."

She stopped and turned.

"She would have liked you," he said. Quiet. Simple. Like it costs him something.

She did not know what to do with that so she just nodded once and walked out.

In the hallway she kept her pace steady and her face calm and her hand pressed flat against the folder she is holding so nobody can see it is not quite steady.

Isla Vane was twenty nine years old and she died and nobody explained it.

And Damien Wolfe just looked at Zara like she might be the next person he loses.

Victor is in the lobby when Zara steps out of the elevator.

He is not waiting for her. He is simply there, speaking to someone near the front desk, coffee in hand, looking like a man with nowhere urgent to be.

He looked up when she crossed the lobby. He smiled. Easy and warm and completely calculated.

"Ms. Mensah. Good morning."

"Mr. Graves."

She did not stop walking. She did not slow down. She gives him exactly the same nod she would give a stranger on the street and pushes through the main door and kept on moving.

Behind her she heard him say nothing.

He did not need to say anything.

He got exactly what he wanted.

He made the call last night. He planted the name. He sent her into that office this morning carrying a question that dug up the one wound Damien Wolfe has never fully closed. And from the look on her face when she walked out of that elevator he can tell it landed exactly where he aimed it.

He took a slow sip of his coffee.

The bond between an alpha and his mate is strong. He knows that better than most.

But grief is stronger. And Victor Graves has barely started.