Chapter 4

Damien's penthouse was exactly what she expected: glass, steel, a view that made the city look small, and exactly one bedroom too small for what they'd just done.

"Where's the guest room?" Ellie asked, standing in the middle of the living room with her single suitcase still in hand.

"There isn't one." Damien set his phone down on the counter, not quite looking at her. "This unit has one bedroom. My assistant is looking into the penthouse next door. It's currently occupied, but the tenant's lease is negotiable."

"Negotiable. Right." Ellie set her suitcase down harder than necessary. "So until then?"

"Until then, I'll take the couch."

"You don't have to."

"I insist." He said it flatly, already turning toward the kitchen, already treating the matter as settled. "It's a long couch."

She wandered the length of the apartment while he made coffee neither of them had asked for, taking in the sterile perfection of it: no photographs, no clutter, nothing that suggested a person actually lived here rather than merely existed in it. The furniture was expensive but impersonal, the kind of thing a decorator chose rather than a person who cared about comfort. Everything was gray and white and chrome, as if color itself had been deemed inefficient.

And then, in the hallway leading to the bedroom, she stopped.

A single framed photograph hung slightly crooked on the wall. Two teenagers on a beach, laughing at something outside the frame: a version of Damien she barely recognized, all sharp angles softened by youth, and beside him, a girl with windblown hair and a gap-toothed grin.

Her.

"You kept this," she said.

Damien appeared in the hallway behind her, coffee mug in hand, and for a moment he looked almost caught. His eyes flicked to the photograph, then away, then back again, as if he was trying to decide how much of his reaction to let her see.

"It came with the apartment. I didn't take it down."

"That's not the same as keeping it."

"Isn't it?" He set the mug on the side table, voice carefully neutral. "It's a photograph, Ellie. Not evidence of sentiment."

"You could have thrown it away anytime in the last eight years."

"I could have." He didn't elaborate, and the silence between them stretched long enough to become its own kind of answer. He could have thrown it away. He didn't. That was the part that mattered, and they both knew it.

She turned back to the photograph. "I remember this day. Your mother took it."

"I remember." Something shifted in his voice, quieter than before. "You'd fallen asleep on the drive home. I had to carry you inside."

"You never told me that."

"You never asked." He picked the mug back up, retreating into the kitchen like the conversation had gotten somewhere he hadn't intended it to go. "There are towels in the hall closet. Take whichever side of the closet you want in the bedroom. I cleared half of it this morning."

"You cleared closet space. Before I signed the contract."

"I'm efficient." He didn't turn around. "It doesn't mean anything beyond that."

She let it go, because pushing felt like standing too close to something that might collapse if she leaned on it too hard, and instead carried her suitcase into the bedroom he'd offered without argument. True to his word, half the closet stood empty, hangers already spaced evenly, waiting.

It was the emptiness that got to her, not unused space, but space prepared. Someone had thought about this. Measured it. Made room for her before she'd agreed to anything at all. She ran her fingers along the empty hangers, counting them. Every hanger was evenly spaced, waiting.

She opened the dresser drawer. Empty. The bathroom vanity had a single toothbrush still in its packaging, a fresh towel, and unopened soap. Everything she would need, arranged and waiting. Not a coincidence. Not "efficiency." Something else entirely.

She was still standing there when her phone buzzed. The unknown number again.

You'll find out soon enough why he really married you.

Her chest tightened. She carried the phone back out to the living room, where Damien had traded coffee for a laptop, jaw set in the particular way she was already learning meant work. His fingers moved across the keyboard with sharp, controlled movements, the tension in his shoulders visible even from across the room.

"Another one," she said, holding out the screen.

He read it, expression unreadable, then set the phone down on the counter between them with more care than the moment seemed to require. His thumb hovered over the screen for a moment, then dropped.

"Marcus is running a trace on the number," he said. "It's routed through three different servers. Whoever this is knows what they're doing."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have right now."

"You said someone leaked the courthouse filing. Now someone's sending photos taken from before the ceremony, texting me the second we walk in the door." Her voice rose despite her best efforts to keep it level. "Damien, this isn't a coincidence. Someone is watching us. Closely. And you don't seem nearly as surprised as I think you should be."

For a long moment, he said nothing at all, and in that silence, she watched something pass behind his eyes: calculation, maybe, or the specific stillness of a man deciding how much truth a person could handle in one night. He closed the laptop slowly, deliberately, giving himself time to choose his next words.

"You think I forced this marriage because of your father," he said quietly. "You think the board vote was the only reason I needed a wife."

"Wasn't it?"

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he looked up, met her eyes, and something in his expression shifted.

"Your father wasn't the only reason," he said.

The words landed like stones in still water. She opened her mouth to ask what that meant, to demand an explanation, but his phone lit up on the counter before she could speak. Marcus's name flashing across the screen, three consecutive calls in the span of ten seconds.

Damien answered on the fourth ring, and whatever color remained in his face drained out entirely as he listened. She watched his grip on the phone tighten until his knuckles went white. The controlled stillness she'd grown accustomed to fractured for just a moment, replaced by something rawer.

"When?" he said. A pause. "Where."

He hung up without another word, already reaching for his coat. His movements were faster now, less measured, and that more than anything else made her stomach drop.

"What is it?" Ellie asked.

"The reporter outside the courthouse today," Damien said. "The one you saw in the gray coat."

"What about him?"

"Marcus just pulled his employment records." Damien's hand was on the door before he finished the sentence. "He doesn't work for any news outlet in this city. He doesn't work for anyone at all, not on paper."

"Then who is he?"

Damien stopped at the door, his hand still on the handle. He turned to look at her, and for the first time since she'd walked into his office three days ago, she saw something that looked almost like fear in his eyes. Not for himself. For her.

"He doesn't officially exist, Ellie. That's the problem."

The door opened behind him, and he stepped through, leaving her standing alone in the middle of his glass-walled penthouse with the city glittering below, her phone burning in her hand with a stranger's warning, and the echo of his last words still hanging in the air.

Your father wasn't the only reason.

She looked down at the photograph on the wall, at two teenagers who had no idea what was coming, and she realized for the first time that she had no idea who Damien Sterling actually was.