All Chapters of HIS BLIND OBSESSION : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

103 Chapters

Chapter 31 — Noah’s POV

Damien had been paying attention. I walked back to my desk, sat down, and stared at the Mercer file. Not the procedure. Not Lena signing the papers or Walsh or the thirty percent or any of the things that had happened in the last seventy-two hours that should have been taking up all available space in my head. Those things were real. Important. I had already filed them where they belonged. This was different. Damien had been paying attention to me in a way that had nothing to do with Henderson or Mercer or whether his coffee arrived at six twenty-eight. His words kept replaying in my head. He hadn’t stumbled over them. Hadn’t tried to take them back. He had said them the same way he said everything else—with that controlled certainty that made you believe he had already considered every possible consequence before opening his mouth. I opened the Mercer file. Read the first line. Closed it. The thing about Damien Cole was that he didn’t say things he didn’t mean. I had le

Chapter 32 — Damien’s POV

I had told him. I sat at my desk and turned that over for a moment before calling Walsh to confirm the Zurich timeline. Then I gave Noah a deadline for the Henderson Q3 figures and went back to work. That was the correct response to what had happened in my office an hour ago. I had said something real. He had received it without drama. We had both moved on. Clean. Professional. Exactly right. The Henderson file arrived at three twenty-eight. Two minutes early. Noah left it on the left side of my desk. “Is that all?” he asked. “Yes.” He left. I read the Henderson file. Put it down. Picked up the Mercer file. Put that down too. My phone buzzed. Daniel. I didn’t answer. It buzzed again. I answered. “You told him,” Daniel said. “I’m aware of what I did.” “And then you gave him a fake deadline.” “The Q3 figures needed cross-referencing.” “Damien.” I said nothing. “He called me,” Daniel said. “Ten minutes after you walked out. You want to know what he said?” “No.

Chapter 33 — Noah’s POV

Daniel was already there when I arrived. Corner table. Two drinks. He pushed one toward me when I sat down. “I don’t drink coffee,” I said. “I know.” I looked at the cup. “It’s tea.” “Damien mentioned it.” He said it like it was completely normal. Like my employer had casually told his brother what I drank and that information hadn’t been important enough to forget. I wrapped my hands around the cup. It was room temperature. I said nothing. “How are you?” Daniel asked. “Fine.” “You slept badly.” “I sleep badly most nights.” I took a sip of tea. “Eli’s been sick for eight months. You get used to being ready for the phone.” Daniel nodded. He didn’t make a sympathetic face or turn it into something bigger than I had intended. “How is he?” “Better. The new dosage is working.” “Good.” He picked up his coffee. Then he looked at me. “I want to tell you something about Damien. Before the accident.” I lowered my cup. “What?” “He was engaged once. Before Lena.” I wai

Chapter 34 — Damien’s POV

I gave him full access to the Mercer file at four fifteen. I sat with that decision for approximately thirty seconds before I made it. Then I made it, told Marcus, went back to work, and decided not to think about it. It was practical. Noah had found a clause three senior lawyers had missed. Giving him full access was efficient. He needed to understand the entire file if he was going to be on the call Friday. That was all. My phone buzzed. Daniel. How was your afternoon? I stared at the message. Fine. A few seconds later: Noah just got back. I know. He reported on the Henderson follow-up. Did he? Yes. A pause. Did you ask him how lunch was? I put the phone face down. Picked it up again. No. Why not? Because it’s not relevant. Damien. Daniel. Another pause. Then: We had a good conversation. He’s interesting. Funny. Smarter than the job requires. You should talk to him more. Outside of work things. I set the phone down. Picked it up again. You’re doing someth

Chapter 35 — Noah’s POV

I knocked and opened the door. “Good morning.” “Mercer prep. Noon.” I stopped. “You said Wednesday evening.” “I moved it.” “That’s four hours from now.” “Then you’d better start.” I looked at him. Jacket on. Tie straight. Everything in place. The version of Damien that had been showing up every morning since he said something honest and immediately rebuilt every wall he’d taken down. “Noon,” I said. I went back to my desk and opened the Mercer file. At nine thirty, my phone buzzed. Daniel. Coming by at eleven. Bringing food. I stared at the message. He’s going to hate that. Yes, Daniel replied. That’s the point. At ten fifty-eight, the elevator opened. Daniel walked in carrying a paper bag and a coffee, looking entirely too pleased with himself. He sat in my spare chair without asking and pushed a container toward me. “Early lunch.” “It’s eleven.” “You’re working through noon anyway.” I opened the container. From down the hall came silence. Not normal silence

Chapter 36 — Damien’s POV

My phone rang at six in the morning. Not Noah’s knock. Not the coffee. My phone. Marcus. Before six twenty-eight, which meant something had already gone wrong before the day had properly started. I answered. “We have a problem,” Marcus said. No preamble. “A serious one.” “Tell me.” “Someone accessed the Cole Enterprises client database last night. Between eleven and two.” I sat up. “How much access?” “Full.” He paused. “Client names, deal structures, financial projections, acquisition targets. Everything we have on forty-three active clients.” My grip tightened around the phone. “Was anything taken?” “Yes.” “How much?” “All of it.” The room seemed to get quieter. “Three financial news outlets received the information around four this morning. Two have already published.” I was out of bed. “Which clients?” “All forty-three.” “Names.” Marcus started listing them. Mercer. Calloway. Henderson. Others followed. I was already moving toward the wardrobe. “Callow

Chapter 37 — Noah’s POV

Damien told me in the hallway. Not everything. Just one word. “Daniel.” He said it flatly, then turned and walked back toward his office. I stood there for a moment, processing what that meant, before following him. He was already at his desk when I came in. Phone in hand. He wasn’t calling anyone yet. Just sitting there, thinking. “Tell me exactly what you told him,” I said. “Two days ago,” Damien said. “Phone call. I mentioned that I had given you full Mercer access. That you had found the page nineteen clause. That it was justified.” “That’s all?” “That’s all.” I sat down. “And Daniel told someone.” “Daniel tells people things without always understanding what he’s handing them.” His voice was flat, but not angry. “He’s warm. Open. He talks. It’s who he is. Someone used it.” “Who does Daniel talk to?” Damien was quiet for a moment. “He has a wide social circle. Business, personal, everything mixed together. He doesn’t separate them the way I do.” “So anyone.” “Anyo

Chapter 38 — Damien’s POV

Calloway signed at four fifteen. Marcus called to confirm. I said good, put the phone down, and sat in my office without moving for a long time. The Mercer clause. Noah had read a sixty-page contract he had never been asked to read. He had remembered a liability clause on page nineteen and used it at exactly the right moment to save a thirty-eight-million-dollar acquisition from a man who had spent three years waiting for an opportunity to burn this company down. Richard Hale. My legal team was building the criminal case. By tomorrow morning, Hale would know the breach had been traced, that the Singapore VPN had been identified, and that Cole Enterprises was pursuing every available legal avenue. His Mercer play was dead. His acquisition strategy was dead. Three years of waiting, and one careless dinner with Daniel, had brought it all down. Daniel. I picked up my phone. Put it down. Picked it up again and called him. He answered immediately. “Is Calloway contained?” he as

Chapter 39 — Noah’s POV

I finished making dinner. Mechanically. My hands did what they knew while my brain was entirely somewhere else, specifically on the counter three feet to my left where Damien’s hand had been on mine for four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Not that I had been counting. I had been counting. I plated everything, set the table, and called down the hall at seven twenty-nine because old habits were apparently stronger than whatever had happened in the kitchen. Also because standing there any longer thinking about his thumb moving across the back of my hand was going to make me do something I had promised myself I wasn’t doing yet. Five weeks. He had said five weeks. Damien came out of his office and navigated to the table with the certainty he always had, hand trailing the wall, finding his chair without asking for help, sitting down with the same composed efficiency of a man who had rebuilt his entire world around knowing exactly where everything was. I sat across from him. We

Chapter 40 — Damien’s POV

I was not sleeping. I lay in the dark thinking about his foot against mine under the table, the eleven minutes he had stood in the kitchen after I left, the way he had said the decided kind of okay, and the five weeks that were starting to feel less like consideration and more like cowardice. Lena’s voice came back to me. You were already gone before the accident. You were never fully there. I was here now. Lying in the dark at eleven p.m., aware of every sound Noah was making twenty feet away. The shift of his mattress. The occasional movement of the sheets. The particular silence of someone who was awake and trying not to make it obvious. Two people in adjacent rooms, both awake and neither saying so. I sat up. Five weeks was forty-one days. Forty-one days of his foot against mine. His hand in mine. Forty-one days of pretending the line I had drawn was about timing when, really, I was afraid of what would happen if I crossed it. Walsh had said the procedure was in five week

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