CHAPTER 3: PROPERTY

Elias!" Irene's voice lifted. "Come see, doesn't she look wonderful?"

He shook Maya's hand and looked at her the way someone looks when they are fitting a face to information they already have.

Congratulations.”

"Thank you." Maya kept her voice even, "Damien didn't mention you'd be here."

"I'm sure he didn't." He was looking at Damien when he said it, pleasantly like a man setting something down on a table and waiting to see who picked it up.

Damien stepped forward nervously. "I...I didn't know you were back, I thought you were still in Dubai."

"I came back early…I had reasons."

Damien chuckled nervously at that word 'reasons'

Victoria, across by the champagne, had gone very still for exactly two seconds. Then she smiled and turned back to refilling glasses.

Maya filed it, smiled at Irene and turned back to the mirror.

The dress was the right one. She decided that while Ciara was fussing with a veil and Irene was already crying again while Damien was standing somewhere behind her being charming at his uncle. The dress was the right one and she was getting married in it and everything else could wait.

Damien drove them home, He was quite unusual and replied in monosyllables.

"Your uncle seems really cool," Maya said.

His hands shifted on the wheel. Just slightly.

"He's all right."

"You seemed uncomfortable."

"We're fine." He checked his mirror. "He's been away and Things changed while he was gone so He's adjusting."

Maya nodded then She watched the road.

Damien checked his rearview mirror, clearing his throat and shifting his grip on the steering wheel.

He adjusted his posture, trying to channel the energy of a serious, responsible family man.

"Hey," he started, his voice coming out easy.

"Your mum's property papers,The land titles, the house documents... are they properly kept somewhere….? Don't get me wrong” Damien said. "I'm just thinking about our future. You know, what we're walking into together."

Maya slowly turned her head from the passenger window to stare at him,"Why do you ask?" Maya asked, a smirk already tugging at the corner of her lips.

"Just being practical!"

Damien threw one hand up defensively before catching the wheel again, a sharp, boyish grin breaking through his serious facade. "It's what couples do! We talk about investments, Real estate, Adult things…, Stop looking at me through the mirror like I'm a tax auditor!"

That broke the dam. In the back seat, Victoria let out a sudden, booming laugh, throwing her head back against the headrest. "A tax auditor?

Sweetheart, we just spent three hours drowning in tulle and lace, and you bring up land titles? You look like a schoolboy trying to sound important!"

"I am being attacked in my own vehicle," Damien laughed, a rich, infectious sound as his ears turned a light shade of pink. He playfully nudged Maya’s shoulder with his own at the red light.

"Come on, back me up here, babe, tell them I'm a visionary."

"Everything is sorted, Mr. Visionary," Maya teased,

giggling as she reached over to squeeze his knee.

You’re hilarious, Damien. Next, he’s going to ask for a copy of the water bill to check our monthly consumption." Ciara said.

"they chatted heartily that the property discussion and everything Maya filed became further away”.

"She watched the road go past.

Damien dropped them off and pulled them away .

"Good evening, Father," she murmured, stopping a few paces away.

"Ah, Maya. You’re back," he said. His voice wasn't a growl, It was calm, Level, Almost warm.

Maya’s breath hitched in her throat. She stayed perfectly still.

"My daughter is getting married tomorrow," he said softly, looking at her as if he were actually seeing her for the first time in years. He clasped his hands together. "It’s a big day, A very big day.”

Maya froze, ,'He hadn't been nice since Mother died, Something's wrong.”

"I need the two seconds," Ciara said, and was already up the stairs before the door finished closing, her designer bag dropped on the hallway table without a second thought.

Maya walked past it.

Her eyes caught the edge of a piece of paper sticking out of the side zip.

She stopped.

She looked at it for a full second, Then she pulled it out.

A jeweler's receipt… Cream paper, embossed header, itemized in neat type.

Custom Floral-Engraved Bracelet Purchased by D.S.

D.S. Damien Sterling.

Her hands were shaking. She registered that before she registered anything else the slight tremor moving up through her fingers and into her wrists.

This was the bracelet on her wrist, This exact bracelet. The one he'd said was a birthday gift he'd been waiting for the right moment to give.

The receipt was dated two days before he put it on her, Two days before he looked at her over the headstone of her mother's grave.

Why did Ciara have it?

Did she help him choose it? Is she trying to show me something? Is this what the warnings were about? she found proof, she's been carrying it, she doesn't know how to tell me? “Maya thought

Ciara's phone on the table lit up.

A text preview from an unsaved number. Four lines and Maya read them before she could decide not to.

The property deeds are as good as ours. Meet me at our usual spot tonight, my queen.

Maya startled, she hid the receipt in her pocket.

Ciara came down fast and grabbed her bag. She grabbed her phone and turned it screen-down in her palm, and for just one second , one unguarded second, she frowned and then smiled nervously.

"Sorry, sis." Ciara's smile was already back, soft and familiar. "Just had to grab my bag. I've got an errand."

She was out the door before Maya could open her mouth.

Maya stood in the hallway alone.

'Probably, a coincidence'. She sighed, holding the receipt.

She looked at the receipt in her pocket. D.S. The bracelet. The same bracelet Damien had put on her wrist in the dark at two in the morning, calm as anything, while a text she wasn't meant to read sat lit up on the nightstand behind them.

Maybe he was seeing someone. He had given the same bracelet to someone else or he'd bought it for someone else and she'd worn it by accident, by design, by whatever this was. And Ciara had the receipt. Ciara knew. And instead of telling her outright, Ciara had been dropping it in small words. Don't trust him too much, keep some information to yourself. I don't trust him, trying to protect her without blowing the whole thing up.

All maybe.

That was why, that was all of it.

Maya pressed her back against the wall. She stood there with the receipt in her pocket and her mother's property papers sitting sorted in a box upstairs and the ring on her finger that she'd said yes to in front of everyone she loved.

I need this wedding. I need the legal standing. I need to be his wife on paper before any of this moves, because my mother's name is on the other side of that altar and I am not stopping now.

She was using Damien to save her mother's legacy.

She had no idea Damien was using the wedding to bury it.