All Chapters of Ruined By Mr. Cross: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Damien’s PovCassandra found us first, which should have told me everything about how this would go before she even opened her mouth. She was waiting in the main sitting room when Selene and I came down for breakfast, dressed as though she’d arranged to be photographed, composure perfect, though I’d learned by now that her composure was always thickest exactly when she had the most to hide.“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said, before either of us had even sat down. “Both of you. I’m not a fool, Damien. I know something’s shifted.”“Should we have a reason to avoid you,” I asked, keeping my voice level, though Selene’s hand found mine briefly under the table, a silent reminder to stay careful.“I raised you,” Cassandra said. “Whatever you think of me, I know your face well enough to see when you’re circling something.”Selene spoke before I could. “We found a ledger,” she said plainly, watching Cassandra’s expression with the same careful precision she brought to everything now. “Your

Damien’s PovMarcus assembled everyone the following morning, the study crowded for the first time in months, Gabriel and Talia and even Naomi seated around the table like a war council finally ready to move instead of merely gathering evidence.“We take it to the board first,” Marcus said. “Full presentation, everything Talia found, everything Cassandra gave us. Once it’s in the formal record, Helena loses the ability to bury it quietly.”“And Adrian,” I asked.“Arrested the same day, ideally the same hour,” Marcus said. “We don’t give either of them time to coordinate a response.”Gabriel sat quiet through most of it, and I caught his eye across the table, remembering the version of him who’d shown up unannounced weeks ago, pacing this same room, terrified of what his mother’s fear might mean. He looked steadier now, though something in his expression still carried the weight of his father’s name buried in those shell filings.“My mother wants to testify,” he said, when Marcus finis

Damien’s PovWe flew to Paris instead of home, an impulsive decision Selene made standing in the Florence airport, scrolling flights on her phone while I checked us in for a return trip to New York.“One more city,” she said, turning the phone toward me. “Marcus said we’ve earned it. I’m inclined to believe him.”“You’re inclined to avoid going home,” I said, though I was already pulling up the app to change our tickets.“Both things can be true,” she said. “Besides, you’ve never taken me to Paris either, and I refuse to let Florence be the only city that gets to know us like this.”“You realize Marcus is going to start charging us for these delays.”“Marcus would fly out here himself and personally extend the trip if he thought it kept us relaxed a week longer,” she said. “The man’s practically begging us not to come back yet.”“He did use the word ‘unsettling.’”“Exactly my point.”So Paris it was, a hotel room overlooking rooftops instead of the Arno, small and slightly crooked in

Damien’s PovWe didn’t go home yet Somewhere over the Pacific, watching Selene sleep against the window with the leather journal still tucked in her lap, I made the decision quietly and told her about it only after we’d already landed, the two of us standing bleary-eyed in an airport neither of us had planned to see.“Damien,” she said slowly, reading the sign overhead. “This is not New York.”“No,” I agreed. “This is Reykjavik.”“You cannot keep doing this.”“I absolutely can,” I said. “I’ve discovered I enjoy it tremendously, and Marcus has explicitly told us not to come home until he says it’s safe regardless. I’m simply taking his advice seriously.”She laughed, exhausted and delighted in equal measure, and let me lead her out into air so cold and clean it felt like it was scrubbing something loose in both our chests, months of boardrooms and ledgers and fluorescent storage units finally exhaled out into the wide gray Icelandic sky.We rented a car that Damien insisted on driving

Damien’s PovWe’d promised Marcus this would be the last trip before we let ourselves actually settle into the reality of a nursery and doctor’s appointments and all the ordinary weight of the life we’d been racing toward all year. Selene had other ideas the moment we landed back in New York, jet-lagged and still smelling faintly of Lisbon salt air.“One more,” she said, before we’d even cleared customs. “Somewhere I actually have a reason to want to go, not just somewhere you’re picking because you like watching me discover things.”“That’s an oddly specific complaint about my generosity.”“It’s not a complaint,” she said. “I want to go to Charleston. My father used to talk about it, before everything. He had a partner there, decades ago, someone he always meant to visit again and never did. I want to see it before I can’t easily fly anymore.”“Do you have a name,” I asked, “or are we knocking on doors.”“Ruth,” she said. “That’s all I have. Ruth, and a street he mentioned once, year