Semua Bab The Enemy I Married: Never Just Business : Bab 1 - Bab 10

Damien Blackwood didn't lose.Not deals. Not arguments. Not wars that other men didn't even know they were fighting. Losing was a concept that belonged to other people, people who hesitated, people who second guessed, people who let emotion sit in the driver's seat.He had cut emotion out of his decisions at twenty two and never once missed it.Or so he had told himself.The truth, the version he kept in the same locked place he kept everything that actually mattered, was that he hadn't cut emotion out at all. He had just learned to compress it. To take everything that hurt and everything that burned and press it down into something hard and dense and purposeful. Something that didn't bleed, but didn't disappear either.Something that waited.He stood at the floor to ceiling window of his office, jacket gone, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a glass of whiskey held loosely in one hand. Forty two floors below the city moved in its small urgent way. Cars. People. Problems that belonged to s

I let his words sit between us for a long moment.Burn everything our fathers built together straight to the ground.I had sat across from a lot of people in my career. Fraudsters. Manipulators. Men who believed their wealth made them untouchable and women who had learned to weaponise charm before they learned anything else. I had developed a specific skill over three years of corporate investigation, the ability to separate what people said from what they meant. To find the gap between the performance and the truth and live in that gap until it told me everything.I was living in that gap right now.And what I found there was not what I expected."You've been planning this for seven years," I said finally."Yes.""Every detail. The debt. The contract. My father's position. All of it was constructed to lead here?""Yes.""And your plan requires me specifically?""Yes."I leaned forward. "Then stop being careful with your words and tell me why. Not the strategic version. Not the versio

I made a mistake.I thought I was opening evidence.I wasn't.I was opening a grave.The folder had one label.The Truth.Not Evidence. Not Case Files. Not anything professional or detached.The Truth.Like he had spent seven years carrying something the rest of the world had been allowed to call something else.I clicked it open.First file. Financial record. Fourteen years old.I recognised the structure before I finished the first paragraph.Shell company. Layered transactions. A name, Vantage Holdings that meant nothing to anyone who didn't know where to look.I knew where to look."Classic," I said quietly. "Move it through enough hands and it stops looking like money."I opened the next file.Same pattern.Then another.Then another.I stopped counting at twelve.By file twenty my coffee was stone cold and my hands were completely still and the picture in front of me wasn't a picture anymore.It was a confession."He has been stealing." I said it out loud. Needed to hear it. Nee

Chapter 8: Terms of BetrayalHis office was on the forty second floor.I knew that before I arrived.Old habit. When I was walking into unknown territory I mapped it first. Floor plans. Company structure. Board members. Key staff. I had done it on every case I had ever worked and I did it now because it was easier than thinking about what I was actually walking into.The lobby was empty at eight o'clock except for a security guard who checked my name without making eye contact and directed me to a private elevator on the left.The elevator opened directly into the office.No reception. No waiting room. Just space. Dark except for the city blazing through the windows and a single lamp burning on the far side of the room.Damien was at the window.Back to me. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled up. One hand braced against the glass.He hadn't heard me come in.I stood there a moment longer than I should have. Long enough to see something in the set of his shoulders that the restaurant version of

Chapter 10 — I Shouldn't Feel ThisI read it three times.Your mother is going to be okay. I've already started fixing it.The phone went face down on the counter.Then back up again.Four times now.The professional part of me said this was strategy. Calculated. A man who understood leverage using the most effective kind available. A move designed to secure cooperation not offer comfort.That part of me was getting harder to listen to.I went to make tea I didn't want. The kettle was loud in the quiet apartment. I stood watching it like it required supervision, and tried to locate the version of myself that had walked into Maren's four days ago with absolute certainty that Damien Blackwood was simply a means to an end.That version felt like someone I used to know.The kettle boiled.My phone was already in my hand before I could stop myself.What do you mean you've already started fixing it.His reply came fast.Graves is being reassigned. New doctor by morning. Best in the country.