All Chapters of Claimed by his obsession : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Sophia's POVSunday, Richard came for lunch again.Fourth week in a row.Nobody announced it or made a thing of it. He arrived at noon, and Zane let him through. He came into the kitchen and said good morning to whoever was there, sat at the counter and accepted coffee, and that was that.The fourth time something happened, it stopped being an event and became a pattern.Patterns were quieter than events. More honest somehow.Lena was there too. She had started arriving on Sundays without being asked, the same way she arrived on Tuesdays and occasionally Thursdays, just present in the way of someone who had found a place that fit and was occupying it without making it complicated.She and Richard had spoken twice before this. Brief. Careful. The particular careful of two people who shared something significant and were finding out what that meant slowly rather than all at once.Today at some point in the kitchen while Remy was arguing with Elijah about something irrelevant and Dominic

Sophia's POVMonday started with an email from Daniel.Not a long one. Just a few lines, written in the direct way he had always communicated when something mattered.The sentencing hearing is in two weeks. Elijah told me you might submit an impact statement. I wanted to say before that happens that whatever you decide I understand. I also wanted to say the research is remarkable. It always was. I'm glad it's coming back.I read it twice at the kitchen counter with my first coffee of the morning.Then I read it a third time.Daniel Kwon who had sold our research and spent three years trying to make it right through anonymous texts and careful maneuvering and eventually stepping into the light when it cost him something to do so.I hadn't fully decided what I thought about him yet.I wasn't sure I needed to fully decide.Some things could just be complicated without requiring a verdict.Damien came in at six forty five exactly, which had become something I could set a clock by, and loo

Sophia's POVWednesday Dominic called a family meeting.Not an emergency one. He had started distinguishing between them since everything settled, which was its own kind of progress. He sent a message to the house group at nine in the morning that said dinner tonight, everyone, seven o'clock, not urgent.Not urgent from Dominic meant come anyway.Everyone came.Lena came. Richard had been invited which I knew because Damien had told me quietly over morning coffee that Dominic had called Richard himself this morning to extend the invitation and that the call had lasted four minutes which was three minutes and forty seconds longer than their previous calls.Progress moved in seconds with these people.I had started to love that about them.By six thirty the kitchen smelled like something Remy had ordered from three different places and arranged on actual serving dishes to maintain the fiction that he had cooked. Lena had brought something real. Mei had appeared from wherever Mei went on

Damien's POVI called Elijah before Sophia finished reading the document a third time.He picked up immediately."I need you in the main room," I said. "Right now.""I'm in the main room," he said.I looked up. He was across the room on his laptop and had apparently been there the whole time."The phone," I said. I walked to him and handed it over.He read it.His face did the thing it did when something legal arrived that was significant. Very still. Eyes moving twice across the same line.He looked up at Sophia."Where did this come from?" he said."Unknown number," she said."Just now," he said."Yes," she said.He looked at the document again."A patent registered thirty-two years ago," he said. "In both your parents' names. For a cardiac mapping framework." He paused. "Do you have any record of this? Anything in the journals. Anything Mei has mentioned?""No," she said. "Nothing.""The laptop," I said. "Her mother's files. Is there anything in there about a patent?"Sophia looked

Damien's POVNobody spoke for a moment.Then Remy said, "Carter", the way you say a word when you need to hear it out loud to believe it."Yes," I said."Our Carter," he said."Yes," I said."The same Carter who spent four years feeding us information to help us," he said. "The same Carter who told us about Diana and the security firm and Crane and all of it.""Yes," I said.Elijah was already at his laptop pulling financial records with the focused speed of someone who needed to see the numbers before he could think about anything else.Zane had his phone out.I looked at Sophia.She was looking at the screen with the expression she wore when she was working through something methodically and didn't want to say it until she was certain."Say it," I said."He didn't betray us," she said. "That's the first thing. Nothing he told us was wrong. Everything he pointed us toward was real." She paused. "But he was also receiving payments from the Vale family account for eight years.""Which