Chapter 14

Damian didn’t wait for the elevator. He took the stairwell of the parking structure two at a time, Mia close behind him, both of them abandoning the meeting with Diane Whitmore the second the security alert came through.

“Talk to me,” Damian said into his phone, voice clipped with a fear he wasn’t bothering to hide anymore. “How does a two-man detail end up unconscious with no sign of forced entry?”

Mia caught fragments of the answer through the speaker — no alarm, no struggle, like they just… went out — and felt ice settle low in her stomach. Not a break-in. Something else. Something that got in clean.

They reached the safe house twenty minutes later, an unassuming townhouse on a quiet street that Damian’s security team had rented under a shell name that morning. Two paramedics were loading one of the unconscious guards into an ambulance; the other sat on the curb, holding an ice pack to his head, blinking against a headache that was clearly making conversation difficult.

“Gas,” he managed, when Damian crouched in front of him. “We didn’t hear anyone. One minute we’re watching the monitors, next thing I know I’m waking up on the floor. Whoever did this knew the building’s ventilation system. That’s not opportunistic. That’s planned.”

Mia’s blood ran cold. “Planned by someone who had access to the blueprints of a house Damian’s own security team rented under a fake name this morning.”

Damian went very still. “Which means the leak isn’t external. It’s internal.” His eyes lifted to meet hers, grim and certain. “Someone on my team, or close enough to my team to know our movements in real time, told Marcus exactly where to find your father.”

“Or,” said a voice from the doorway, cool and entirely too composed for the chaos around her, “someone close enough to you, Damian. Not your team.”

Serena stood on the townhouse steps, arms crossed, dressed like she’d come from somewhere important and hadn’t planned on staying long — the same posture from the gala, the same razor-edged smile, except this time there was something colder underneath it.

“What are you doing here?” Mia demanded.

“Damage control, if you must know.” Serena’s gaze flicked between them. “Marcus called me an hour ago, gloating about a hearing he’s confident he’s going to win. He also mentioned, almost in passing, that Richard Bennett’s ‘unfortunate disappearance’ would make everything so much simpler for everyone involved.” Her jaw tightened, and for the first time since Mia had met her, the mask slipped — just slightly, just enough to show something underneath that looked almost like fear. “I didn’t think he’d actually go through with it.”

“You knew,” Damian said, low and dangerous. “You knew what he was planning.”

“I suspected. I didn’t know, not until he called sounding pleased with himself.” Serena’s composure cracked further. “Marcus isn’t just my cousin’s business rival, Damian. He’s been controlling my father’s seat on the board for years — quietly, patiently, the same way he’s apparently been running whatever this is with Reyes. I’ve spent years playing along because I thought it was about money, about influence. I didn’t think he’d escalate to kidnapping a man in broad daylight.”

“And yet you came here to warn us instead of him,” Mia said slowly. “Why?”

Serena’s eyes met hers, and for once there was no performance in them at all. “Because I’ve spent my whole life underestimated by men like Marcus, told to smile and stay useful and wait my turn. I don’t care about your marriage, Mia, real or fake. But I’m done being collateral in whatever my cousin thinks he’s entitled to.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her bag and held it out. “GPS coordinates. Marcus doesn’t know I have access to Reyes’s vehicle tracker — leftover from when I still trusted him enough to help manage logistics. Your father is being held at a property twenty minutes from here. You have maybe an hour before Marcus decides a missing witness is more useful to him dead than silent.”

“You shouldn’t trust me blindly,” Serena said. “But you should trust that I have absolutely nothing left to gain by letting Marcus win this. If he takes full control of the board, my father’s seat disappears with it. I’ve spent years protecting a family that was never going to protect me back.” She turned to leave, then paused. “For what it’s worth, Damian — I was cruel to her at the gala because I thought your marriage was still just strategy. I didn’t realize, until I watched your face just now, that it isn’t anymore.”

She left before either of them could respond, heels clicking against the pavement, and Mia turned to find Damian already moving toward the car, the coordinates clutched in his hand.

“We don’t have an hour to waste second-guessing her,” he said. “If there’s even a chance this is real—”

“Then we go now.” Mia was already climbing into the passenger seat. “Together. No more leaving me behind to wait and wonder, Damian. Whatever happens at that property, I’m not doing this part without you.”

Something shifted in his expression — gratitude, maybe, or something closer to the thing neither of them had said out loud yet. He reached over before starting the car, his hand closing around hers, steady and certain in a way that had nothing to do with strategy.

“Then we go together,” he said quietly. “And Mia — whatever we find in that building, I need you to know that somewhere between the wedding I planned as a weapon and this exact moment, you stopped being part of my revenge. You became the only thing in this entire mess I actually want to protect.”

The car pulled away from the curb, coordinates glowing on the screen between them, the clock already counting down on the hour Serena had given them to save Richard Bennett before Marcus Vane decided a body was easier to manage than a witness.