Chapter 6

Damien set his briefcase down slowly, deliberately, the way he did everything when he was buying himself time to think.

"Where did you hear that name?" he asked.

"Answer my question first."

"Ellie."

"You've had all day to explain the man in the gray coat, the leaked filing, the texts. Instead I get silence and a warning to stay inside." Her voice was rising now, and she didn't try to stop it. "My father just called to tell me a reporter's asking about your father's dead business partner. So no. You don't get to stall anymore."

Something in Damien's face shifted, not surprise exactly, but the particular stillness of a man recalculating in real time. He set his phone on the counter and pulled out a chair, sitting down heavily, as if the weight of the conversation had finally caught up with him.

"Julian Vance," he said finally, "worked for my father for almost fifteen years. Head of acquisitions. By all accounts, brilliant. Ruthless, in the way my father liked people to be ruthless."

"And?"

"And ten years ago, he disappeared. Officially, he resigned and moved abroad. There was a small item in the business press, nothing more." Damien's jaw tightened. "Six weeks later, my father died of a heart attack in his office. I was twenty-four. I inherited a company mid-collapse and a board that didn't trust me to run it."

"That's not an explanation for reporters asking about a body no one's seen in ten years."

Damien went very still. "Where did you hear that specific phrase?"

She held up her phone, the message still glowing on the screen. He read it twice, and this time she watched something genuinely crack in his composure, not panic, but close enough to it that her own pulse quickened in response.

"I need that number," he said. "Everything Marcus has on it. Tonight."

"Damien. Talk to me. What aren't you telling me?"

He was quiet for a long moment, staring at nothing, and when he finally spoke, his voice had lost some of its usual precision. "There were rumors, after my father died, that Julian's resignation wasn't voluntary. That something happened between them before he left. My father never discussed it. I was too busy trying to keep the company from collapsing to chase down a rumor about a man who was already gone."

"And now someone's resurrecting it. During our marriage. During a week when reporters are already circling."

"That's not a coincidence," Damien said quietly. "I know that much."

He pressed his palms flat against the counter, steadying himself, and she watched the controlled mask slide back into place piece by piece. It was almost frightening how quickly he could do that, how easily he could bury whatever emotion had surfaced. Almost frightening, but not quite. Because she'd seen the crack now. She knew it was there.

"You said Julian resigned," she pressed. "But the text says nobody's seen the body in ten years. That implies he died."

"I don't know what happened to him, Ellie." Damien's voice was flat, almost hollow. "I was twenty-four. My father was dead. The company was in chaos. I didn't investigate. I didn't ask questions. I just tried to survive."

"Someone thinks you know more than you're telling. Or they're using our marriage to force you to talk."

"I know." He met her eyes, and for the first time, she saw something that looked almost like helplessness there. "I know what it looks like. I know the timing. But I've been asking myself the same questions since the first message appeared, and I don't have answers. Not yet."

His phone buzzed before she could respond, Marcus again, and this time Damien put it on speaker without asking her to leave the room, which felt, in its own small way, like a decision. Like he was finally letting her inside the circle.

"Talk to me," Damien said.

"The number's routed through an offshore relay, same as before, but I got a partial trace on the last message's origin point." Marcus's voice was tight, hurried. "It ping-ponged through three countries, but the final signal bounced off a tower six blocks from your building, Damien. Whoever's sending these isn't hiding in some overseas server farm. They're here. Local. Possibly watching the building right now."

Ellie's stomach dropped. She glanced instinctively toward the window, at the crowd of reporters still gathered below, indistinguishable now from anyone else who might be standing among them. Somewhere out there, in that sea of faces and cameras, someone was watching her. Watching them.

"Pull the lobby cameras," Damien said. "Every angle, going back to this morning."

"Already on it." Marcus paused, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its professional edge. "There's something else. The reporter who called Arthur Calder, I tracked his outlet. It doesn't exist. Not registered, no masthead, no other bylines. Whoever's asking about Julian Vance isn't press at all."

"Then who are they?"

"I don't know yet. But Damien," a pause, weighted with something Ellie couldn't quite name, "whoever this is, they know things about your father's company that were never public. Personnel files. Financial records. Things that were supposed to be sealed."

Damien ended the call and set the phone down carefully, like it might go off again if he moved too fast. His hands were steady, but his eyes weren't. She saw it now, the tension coiled beneath the surface, the way he held himself together by sheer force of will.

"Someone has access to sealed corporate files," Ellie said slowly, "and they're using our marriage as leverage to surface a decade-old disappearance."

"It appears that way."

"Why now? Why this week?"

Damien didn't answer right away. Instead, he crossed to the window, looking down at the crowd below with an expression she couldn't quite read: calculation, maybe, or the specific dread of a man realizing the ground beneath him wasn't as solid as he'd built it to seem.

"Because," he said finally, "this week is the first time in ten years I've had something to lose that isn't just the company."

The words hung in the air between them, unexpected enough that neither of them moved to fill the silence that followed. She stared at his back, at the rigid line of his shoulders, and realized he wasn't talking about the company at all.

Before she could respond, his phone buzzed again. Marcus, calling back within minutes of hanging up.

"I just pulled the lobby security feed," Marcus said, his voice faster now, almost breathless. "Damien, you need to see this. Someone entered your building twenty minutes ago. They used a visitor badge that shouldn't exist."

Damien's hand tightened on the phone. "What do you mean, shouldn't exist?"

"The badge number is valid. It's registered in the system. But the name attached to it hasn't been active for a decade." Marcus paused, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone flat with disbelief. "The visitor signed in as Julian Vance."

The room went silent. Ellie could hear her own heartbeat, too loud in her ears, as Damien slowly turned from the window.

"That's impossible," he said.

"I know." Marcus's voice was barely above a whisper now. "I know it is. But the system doesn't lie, Damien. Someone just walked into your building using a dead man's credentials."

Damien's eyes met Ellie's across the room, and for the first time since she'd known him, he looked genuinely afraid. Not of the building. Not of the badge. Of what it meant. Of what was coming next.

"Marcus," Damien said quietly, "lock down the building. I want every floor searched. And find out who actually signed that badge."

There was a pause on the line, longer than it should have been. When Marcus spoke again, his voice had changed. Quieter. Slower. Almost reluctant.

"Damien..."

"What?"

"I compared the lobby footage against the archived employee file. The old one, from Julian's personnel record."

"And?"

Marcus didn't answer. Ellie could hear his uneven breathing over the line.

"Marcus."

"...You need to see this yourself, Damien."

"Why?"

A long pause. When Marcus finally spoke, his voice had dropped so low it was almost lost under the hum of the penthouse lights.

"Because if I'm right about what I'm looking at..."

Marcus drew a slow breath.

"...everything we've believed for the last ten years is wrong."

Silence.

Damien didn't answer. Neither did Ellie.

Because neither of them wanted to be the first person to ask what Marcus had just seen.