All Chapters of Nothing Left To Save: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

Only then did Damon remember that I had called him ninety-nine times on the night North Harbor exploded.That evening, someone set fire to the warehouse at the old Westmore pier. My father, Arthur Westmore, was the last one out. He had gone back for the family bookkeeper and two children trapped inside, and the collapsing steel beam caught him across the chest. Shrapnel tore through him before anyone could pull him free.By the time they carried him into St. Ambrose, his breathing was already thin.The doctor on duty came out with blood on both hands and told me the trauma team had to move now. But North Harbor had been locked down under Moretti orders. Without Damon's approval, ambulances couldn't get through, outside surgeons couldn't pass the checkpoints, and no helicopter could land on the roof. The Moretti private emergency unit answered to him and him alone.I stood in the hallway and called him again and again with shaking fingers.The first call rang out.The seventeenth was c

Chapter 2

My father's memorial was held in the glass hall of the old Westmore house.That house used to overlook all of North Harbor. Now the windows faced nothing but ruins behind police tape and rain-blackened barricades.I placed the black-gold signet in a black velvet box at the center of the memorial table. Under the lamps, the raven on its face looked cold, as if my father were standing behind me one last time in silence.At three in the afternoon, Damon arrived.He wore a dark suit, rain still clinging to his shoulders. Behind him came Selena Vale, the woman the Moretti family had protected most carefully over the past two years.She was the daughter of an old friend Damon had once saved when they were young. And she was pretty, fragile, and perfectly timed. She knew when to make her eyes turn red, and she knew how to make Damon feel like the kind of man who could still rescue everyone."Vivi." Damon stopped in front of me, his voice deliberately gentle. "I'm back."Once, that name from h

Chapter 3

On the day of my father’s funeral, cold rain fell over Chicago.Not many people came. The old bookkeeper from the pier, several widows my father had protected, and a handful of retired gunmen who had long ago faded into the shadows stood along the sides of the glass hall in black. My father's photograph stood in the center.The black-gold signet rested before it. The raven on its face looked ready to fly out of the dark velvet.Damon and Selena arrived twenty minutes late.Selena frowned the moment she stepped inside. "This is... small. If Mr. Arthur is really gone, why didn't any of the Moretti elders come? Vivian, did you put this show together in a rush?"I said nothing.Damon glanced at her, but he didn't stop her.Selena grew bolder. She walked to the memorial table and fixed her eyes on the signet."So this is the Westmore family ring?" She gave a little laugh. "I thought it would be worth more. It looks like something from a pawnshop."The old bookkeeper's face changed. He lowe

Chapter 4

For one heartbeat after I read the ruling, nobody moved.Selena gave a shaky laugh, too bright and too thin. "What did you just say?"Damon didn't laugh.He could choose not to believe my tears. He could choose not to believe my father's death. He could even stand by while Selena threw the Westmore signet into the fire.But he knew the Commission's silver seal.Once the long table recognized an heir, no family in Chicago could put that heir back on someone else's leash. Not even Moretti.The doors of the glass hall opened before Damon could answer.Black sedans filled the street outside the Westmore house. Men in dark coats stood beneath the rain, silent as executioners.They had not come to mourn.They had come to witness the full ruling.Selena hid behind Damon, white as paper.She must have finally understood that the two lines I had read weren’t a threat. Vincent Caruso, the Commission's executor, walked in from the rain.He was close to sixty, his silver hair combed perfectly bac

Chapter 5

When Selena was dragged out, she finally screamed as if something inside her had split open. "Damon! Save me! You said you would protect me!"She tried to grab the hem of his jacket, but the Commission men pinned her shoulders and hauled her away like a cat that had dirtied an expensive rug.Yesterday, she had dared throw the Westmore signet into the fire.Today, she didn't even have the nerve to raise her eyes to mine.Damon stood where he was, pale and silent, and for the first time, he did not immediately step in to shield her.Maybe he had finally realized that the name Moretti could not block every consequence.Vincent handed the ruling back to me. "Miss Westmore, my condolences."I took it with steady fingers.Damon suddenly stepped forward. "Vivian. You had all of this prepared?"I looked at him and almost laughed. "My father gave me the ledgers before he died. You gave me a reason to use them."Panic finally flickered in his eyes. "I didn't know Arthur would actually die.""I t

Chapter 6

The first report from the Westmore cemetery arrived two weeks later.The Commission supervisor wrote in short, plain sentences. Selena Vale had fallen sick on the first day.The winter wind off North Harbor could cut through bone. Selena used to live in Moretti's penthouse, where the carpets were so thick footsteps vanished, and one wall of her closet was lined with custom gowns.Now she wore gray work clothes every day, cleaning headstones in the Westmore cemetery, sweeping dead branches, and replacing flowers for the people she had mocked.She cried that her hands hurt. She cried that she had never done this kind of work before.No one cared.Damon was placed in the side building of the Westmore family chapel.They called it mourning. It was house arrest.He could not return to the Moretti estate, attend Commission meetings, or touch North Harbor business. Every morning, he had to wipe Arthur Westmore's memorial tablet with his own hands and stand in the chapel for three full hours.

Chapter 7

Selena had dared destroy the signet at the Westmore service not only because Damon spoiled her.She also had the Vale family behind her.For years, the Vales had used Damon's name to feed off North Harbor. After Westmore's fall, they swallowed several small shipping routes through shell companies. They even siphoned off part of the trust fund my father had set aside for Westmore widows.When my father was alive, he didn't want another war. He said Westmore was old, and it was enough to protect whoever remained.But the remaining people had died in that fire. I had no reason to leave the debt unpaid.I handed my father's ledgers to Vincent and asked the old bookkeeper to fill in the missing cash flow from the last three years.Three days later, the long table moved.Three companies under the Vale name were frozen. Two pier managers were taken in overnight. Selena's father was stopped outside a private club while trying to call Damon for help.Of course, the call never went through.Damo

Chapter 8

The divorce papers were delivered to the Westmore family chapel on an overcast day.I didn’t go myself. I sent my lawyer with the Commission witness papers and had him place everything in front of Damon.Damon took a long time to sign. When my lawyer came back, he told me Damon had stared at the document for a full hour.He asked many useless questions.Where I was living.Whether I had been eating on time.Whether the burned signet had been recast.Under my instructions, the lawyer answered none of them. At last, Damon signed his name at the end of the file.His handwriting was still elegant, but the final stroke pressed so hard it nearly tore through the page.Legally, by Commission rules, and in the eyes of everyone who mattered, I was no longer Mrs. Moretti.I was Vivian Westmore.The day the signed papers arrived, I disposed of everything that had belonged to me in the Moretti estate.The gowns went to a charity auction. The jewelry went to an auction house. My wedding ring went i

Chapter 9

The first time Damon escaped the family chapel to find me was four months after the ruling.That day, I was about to leave North Harbor to inspect a new warehouse site in a lake town to the south.My car had just rolled out of the old house's gate when a ragged figure rushed out and blocked the road.The driver slammed on the brakes. I looked up and saw Damon.After only a few months, he had lost a lot of weight. The black suit that used to fit him perfectly was wrinkled. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and his eyes were threaded with red.He no longer looked like the calm Moretti heir who once stood at the Chicago long table as if the city were built for him.He looked like a man finally trapped inside his own mistake.Damon stumbled to my window, his voice hoarse. "Vivian, don't go."I lowered the window halfway and looked at him calmly. "You violated the Commission ruling."He stared at me as if he hadn't heard. "I know I was wrong."Those words sounded almost absurd coming from him.

Chapter 10

By the time the car left North Harbor, the sky had finally cleared.In the rearview mirror, Commission men had pinned Damon down, and the folding knife lay on the road with a small, pale sound.The wind swallowed it almost immediately. I didn’t ask what would happen to him afterward.To me, the name Damon Moretti already belonged with the old letters burned to ash, the wedding ring sunk in the harbor, and the ruined dream I had stopped trying to save.One month later, I bought my first warehouse site in a lake town to the south.There was no rusted North Harbor smell here and no black Moretti gate pressing the air out of my lungs.There was fog in the morning and boats at dusk. The little restaurant on the corner set fresh bread in the window, and the air held a warm hint of wheat.The old bookkeeper came with me and still insisted on calling me Miss.I corrected him several times. He never managed to change. He said he had called my father Mr. Arthur until the end, and some habits wer

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