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Chapter 45
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2026-07-13 12:26:48The figure didn't move.
It stood at the far end of the recovery wing corridor, half swallowed by shadow, motionless as the footprint that had betrayed it."Don't," Marcus said, low, as the security chief raised his weapon. "Not yet.""Marcus.""I said not yet."Damien stepped forward instead, flashlight steady on the shape ahead of them. "Who's there?"Silence answered him. Then, slowly, the figure lifted both hands, palms open."
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Marcus finally answered on the ninth call, voice rough like he hadn't slept or hadn't stopped drinking, maybe both."Where are you," Damien said, no greeting."Somewhere you can't yell at me through a phone.""You resigned. You didn't tell me. Someone used my clearance to walk into Hawthorne before I did, and you resigned the same night."Silence on the line, long enough that Damien thought the call had dropped."Marcus. Are you still there.""I'm here." A long breath crackled through the line. "I just don't know where to start.""Start with why you resigned.""I need you to come in," Damien said. "Now."Marcus came in an hour later, unshaven, moving like the last two days had cost him years. He sat across from Damien and Julian in the small conference room they'd taken over, hands flat on the table like he needed them steady."I didn't resign because I did something," Marcus said. "I resigned because I finally understood I never knew what I was part of.""Explain that," Damien said.
The Billionaire’s Favorite Mistake Chapter 58
Marcus wasn't in his office. He wasn't in his apartment either."He's not answering," Julian said, the phone pressed to his ear for the fourth time. "Straight to voicemail.""Keep trying." Damien was already moving toward the stairwell that led to Hawthorne, agents parting around him because no one wanted to be the one to stop him."Damien." Julian caught up to him, matching his pace. "It's been less than a day. He could be anywhere.""He didn't just resign and disappear for no reason. He's either running from something or running toward it.""And if it's neither? If something already happened to him?"Damien didn't answer that. He didn't have an answer he wanted to say out loud.He took the stairs two at a time, the agents' footsteps falling behind him, until the sound of the search narrowed down to just his own breathing and the echo of his boots against concrete.The lower archive that had held Hawthorne's re
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"No," Victoria said again, quieter this time, and closed the folder before Damien could ask a third time. "Not tonight. Please."He wanted to push. He didn't.By midnight the plaza had emptied into a hospital room, private, guarded, the blinds drawn against the last of the news vans outside. Victoria sat propped against pillows, still in a hospital gown, still looking at Damien like she couldn't quite believe he was allowed to exist in the same room as her."Tell me something normal," she said."Normal like what?""Your birthday. What did you do for your birthday? Any of them."Damien sat on the edge of the chair, elbows on his knees. "Which year?""Any year. All of them."He thought about lying, giving her something easy. He didn't. "Marcus usually forgot until the day of. Then he'd panic and buy something expensive and useless.""Like what?""Once it was a telescope. I was 14. I didn't care a
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Red and blue lights washed over Sterling Tower as paramedics lifted Victoria onto a stretcher."Careful," Damien said, walking beside her. "Careful with her arm.""We've got her, sir," the paramedic said. "You need to step back.""I'm not stepping back."Victoria reached up and caught his sleeve. "Damien. Go.""I'm not leaving you again.""You're not leaving me. You're finishing this." Her voice was thin but steady. "Go make sure it's real.""I don't care about real right now. I care about you getting into that ambulance.""I am getting into the ambulance," Victoria said. "With or without you standing here arguing about it.""Sir," the paramedic said again, gentler this time, "she's stable. We just need room to work."Ellie appeared at his shoulder before he could argue, sliding her hand into his. "I'll stay with her. Go."Damien looked at her for one second too long, then nodded and t
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"There has to be another way," Damien said, already sweeping his flashlight across the sealed door, searching for a seam, a switch, anything."There is," the security chief said, checking a service panel set into the wall nearby. "Emergency maintenance shaft. It's narrow, and it's not built for this many people moving quickly, but it's there.""Then we use it," Damien said.Above them, the tremors grew stronger, the concrete groaning under stress it hadn't been designed to bear. Somewhere far overhead, a deep structural boom rolled through the building, followed by the distant hiss of sprinkler systems activating in sequence, floor by floor. Water began seeping down through hairline cracks in the ceiling, dark stains spreading across the concrete like something bleeding from within."Sterling Tower is coming down," Marcus said. "Not all of it. But enough.""Move," Damien said, and nobody argued.They pressed into the narrow shaft
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"You could have escaped," Damien said, once they'd found the alternate route and were moving again, the words finally forcing their way out of him. "Years ago. If you learned this place as well as you say." Victoria's steps didn't slow, but her voice, when it came, carried the weight of something she'd clearly turned over in her mind ten thousand times. "I could have escaped alone," she said. "I never could have escaped without exposing you. The moment they realized I was gone, they would have gone looking for what I'd left behind. And what I'd left behind was you, growing up believing you were safe. I couldn't buy my freedom with yours." "You should have let me decide that." "You were four years old, Damien. There was no version of that where you got to decide anything." Marcus, walking a step behind them, finally broke his silence. "I should have found a way to get you both out. I had access. I had information. I told myself there was no safe way to move, and maybe that was
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Ellie POVThe air in Damien’s office smelled of cedar and ozone. It was the same scent that had lingered on my skin for years, long after I had walked away from him. I stood by the floor to ceiling windows, looking out at the Manhattan skyline. From this high up, the people below looked like ants
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