Chapter 3.

Mia told herself it wasn’t about hiding — it was about needing air, needing distance, needing a minute where Damian Cross’s voice wasn’t dismantling everything she thought she understood about the last six days of her life. But by nine o’clock, hunger won the argument her pride had been losing anyway, and she padded down the east hall in search of the kitchen.

She found Damian there instead, sitting alone at the massive dining table with a laptop open and a glass of something amber beside it, dinner untouched.

He looked up when she entered. Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“There’s a plate for you in the warmer,” he said finally, nodding toward the kitchen without looking away from his screen. “Delia doesn’t like cooking for one person. Force of habit, I imagine.”

“I’m not hungry.” Which was a lie, and judging by the look he gave her, he knew it.

“Sit down, Mia.”

It was the first time he’d used her name instead of Ms. Bennett or Mrs. Cross, and something about hearing it in his voice — low, unbothered, like he had every right to it — made her chest tighten in a way she didn’t have time to examine.

She sat. Not because he’d told her to. Because her legs had stopped arguing with the rest of her.

“I want to understand something,” she said, once the plate was in front of her and she’d forced down a few bites just to have something to do with her hands. “You spent ten years building a case against my father. A wall of photographs, a decade of — of whatever that room is. And your plan, after all that time, was marriage?”

“My plan was leverage.” Damian closed the laptop. “Marriage was simply the most effective form it could take.”

“Why not just destroy him? Financially, legally — you clearly have the resources.”

“Because destroying him quickly would have been merciful.” His eyes met hers, and there was nothing performative in them now — just something colder and older than she’d expected to find. “I don’t want mercy for Richard Bennett. I want him to watch his daughter live in my house, wear my name, and know that the debt he thinks he’s paid isn’t the one that matters.”

Mia set her fork down. “So this is about hurting him. Through me.”

Initially.”

“And now?”

Something shifted behind his expression — barely perceptible, gone before she could name it. “Now you’re asking questions I haven’t finished answering for myself.”

It wasn’t an answer. It was worse than no answer, because it implied there was something there to eventually explain, and she hated how much that unsettled her.

“I want to know what happened,” she said instead. “The real story. Not headlines. Not your version of it, either — the truth.”

“The truth is that your father worked for mine for twelve years. Rose to CFO. And when the company needed someone to blame for the funds he’d been quietly siphoning for himself, he made sure it wasn’t his name attached to the fraud investigation.”

“That’s not possible. My father—” Mia stopped, because the sentence she’d been about to finish — my father would never — had gotten harder to say with total conviction over the past week than it used to be.

“Your father is a good liar,” Damian said, not unkindly, which was somehow worse. “I’d know. I spent years believing him too.”

The silence after that stretched long enough that Mia could hear the city humming faintly through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“If you hate him this much,” she said finally, “you must hate me too. Just for existing. Just for being his daughter.”

Damian didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had lost some of its edge — not warmth, exactly, but something quieter.

“I don’t know what I feel about you yet. That’s the problem.”

Before Mia could decide what to do with that, the front door chimed, and a woman’s voice carried through the penthouse like she owned it.

“Damian? Whose shoes are these in the—” A woman rounded the corner into the dining room and stopped short at the sight of Mia. Tall, sharp-featured, dressed like she’d come from somewhere important and hadn’t planned on staying long. Her eyes moved over Mia once, assessing, dismissive, before landing back on Damian.

“Serena.” Damian’s tone carried a warning Mia hadn’t heard him use before.

“Relax, cousin. I’m only being honest.” Serena set her bag down on the table like she intended to stay a while, despite no one inviting her to. “Someone should be, don’t you think? Considering how this marriage started.”

Mia’s stomach dropped. “What does that mean?”

Serena’s smile widened, delighted by the question. “You mean he hasn’t told you everything?” She glanced at Damian, something almost gleeful in the look. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”

“Serena.” Damian stood, and the word came out low enough that even Serena’s smile faltered slightly. “Not tonight.”

“Fine.” She held both hands up in mock surrender, though her eyes never left Mia. “But she’s going to find out eventually, Damian. Everyone always does.”

Serena turned and left as abruptly as she’d arrived, her heels clicking against the marble floor until the front door closed behind her with a sound too soft to match the weight of what she’d left hanging in the room.

Mia looked at Damian, her pulse loud in her own ears. “What did she mean? What haven’t you told me?”

Damian’s jaw tightened. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked like a man choosing his next words very, very carefully.

“Not tonight,” he said quietly, echoing his own warning to Serena, and walked out of the room before Mia could stop him — leaving her alone with a cold dinner, a hundred new questions, and the growing, uneasy certainty that the version of the truth she’d been given was only the smallest piece of it.