CHAPTER 7

Damien's POV

I didn't sleep.

Not because of the scandal or the forty thousand notifications or Dominic pacing his office until two in the morning rebuilding a strategy I had destroyed in four seconds. Those things I could work with. Those had solutions.

I didn't sleep because of Sophia's face in the kitchen when she hit her.

Not crying. Just that expression underneath crying that people make when something is too big and their face gives up. I had seen that expression once before. In a mirror. The day I was six years old and understood that the packed bags and the locked door meant nobody was coming back.

I got up at five and went to my office and pulled everything on the Vale family finances.

Elijah had sent the court filing at midnight. I read through it twice and then called him.

He picked up immediately which meant he hadn't slept either.

"Trust," I said. "How long has it been active?"

"Twenty-six years," Elijah said. "Set up by Sophia's parents before she was born. Standard beneficiary structure, assets transfer to the spouse of the named child upon marriage." A pause. "Marcus knew before the wedding. His lawyers flagged it during the engagement."

"Victoria."

"Almost certainly. She would have run a full financial background before approving the match." Another pause. "Damien the trust isn't small. We're talking property holdings, patents, and a significant cash position that's been compounding for two decades."

I sat back.

Sophia had walked into that marriage with more than any of them. She just hadn't known it. And they had spent three years making sure she felt like nothing so that when they finally pushed her out she wouldn't think to look.

"Can Marcus take it," I said.

"He'll try. The filing has some basis, but the beneficiary language is genuinely ambiguous. But." Elijah paused. "Not if we move first."

"Move then," I said. "Everything you need, whatever it costs."

"Damien." His voice shifted slightly. "This isn't a Black matter legally. Sophia would need to authorize…"

"I'll talk to her," I said. "Move first. Talk second."

I hung up and stared at the city through the window.

Dominic was going to say I was making it personal. He was going to be right. I had stopped being objective somewhere between the kitchen last night and the moment Marcus's hand closed around her wrist and I felt something in my chest go very quiet and very cold.

I didn't do anything personal. I had twenty-seven years of evidence supporting that.

And yet.

My office door opened without a knock.

Dominic walked in and sat on my couch and looked at me with the expression he used when he already knew the answer to what he was about to ask.

"How bad is it," I said.

"The coverage is everywhere. Three major outlets picked it up overnight. The affair narrative is gaining traction." He looked at me steadily. "The BCT government contract has a morality clause. If this story holds for another forty-eight hours they'll review our eligibility."

I said nothing.

"That contract is worth three hundred million," Dominic said. "Three hundred million Damien."

"I know what it's worth."

"Do you. Because last night you kissed her in front of cameras and now we are forty-eight hours away from losing the biggest contract this branch has ever secured." He leaned forward. "I need to know it won't happen again."

I looked at him.

"It won't happen again in public," I said.

Dominic closed his eyes briefly. "That is not the reassurance I was looking for."

"It's the one I have."

He stood up and walked to the window and stood with his back to me the way he did when he was deciding something he didn't want to decide.

"She's not a sister to you," he said.

"No."

"She was supposed to be."

"I know."

"Damien if this gets out. If the board thinks the relationship is real. The sister narrative collapses and we lose everything we built around it."

"Then we build something else," I said.

He turned around. "It's not that simple."

"It never is with you," I said. "But you always figure it out."

He looked at me for a long moment. The older brother looks. The one that said he was calculating seventeen things simultaneously and none of them were going in a direction he liked.

"Don't make me regret bringing her here," he said quietly.

He left.

I sat in the office for another hour. Then I went to find Sophia.

She was already awake. In the kitchen. Of course she was.

She was in an oversized sweater and her hair was down and she was reading something on her phone with the focused expression of someone processing bad news methodically. She looked up when I came in.

"I saw the coverage," she said.

"I know."

"It's bad."

"Yes."

She put the phone down. "How bad for the contract."

I looked at her. "You know about the contract."

"I overheard Dominic last night before he went to bed. Three hundred million. Morality clause. Forty-eight hours." She wrapped her hands around her mug. "I'm sorry. This is my fault."

"It's Marcus's fault," I said.

"You kissed me because of Marcus. The fallout is because of me being here." She looked at the counter. "If I left. Went somewhere else. The sister story falls apart but at least the contract—"

"You're not leaving," I said.

She looked up.

"You're not leaving," I said again. Quieter. "That's not a discussion."

She looked at me for a moment with those eyes that saw too much.

"Damien the trust," she said. "Elijah called me this morning."

I still went.

"He explained everything," she said. "The filing, the assets, what Marcus is trying to do." She paused. "He also told me you said move first talk second."

"Sophia—"

"I authorized it," she said simply. "Everything Elijah needs. I signed the paperwork an hour ago." She looked at her mug. "I didn't know about the trust. I didn't know my parents had anything. I spent three years in that house being told I came from nothing and the whole time—" She stopped.

I sat down across from her and waited.

"I keep thinking about my mother," she said quietly. "She would have hated Marcus. She was sharp, my mum. She saw through people fast." Something moved across her face. "She would have seen through him in ten minutes."

"What happened to them," I said. I hadn't asked before. It hadn't felt like my question to ask.

"Car accident," she said. "I was nineteen. First year of university." She looked at the window. "I had nothing after. No family. No money. And then Marcus was there being charming and certain and I thought—" She stopped again. Shook her head. "I thought I was lucky."

The kitchen was quiet.

"You weren't unlucky before him," I said. "You were targeted."

She looked at me.

"He knew about the trust before he met you," I said. "This wasn't accidental Sophia. You were chosen specifically."

She sat with that.

I watched her process it, the same way she had processed everything since I met her. Quietly, completely, without falling apart even when falling apart would have been the easiest thing.

"Okay," she said finally.

Just that. Okay.

"Okay," I said back.

She picked up her mug. Then put it down. Then looked at me with an expression that was direct and a little exhausted and completely unguarded.

"The kiss," she said.

I held her gaze.

"It can't happen again," she said. "Not in public. Not while the contract is at risk and the sister story is still the plan." She paused. "Dominic needs this to work. The brothers need this to work. I'm not going to be the reason it doesn't."

I looked at her.

She was protecting my family. A family she had known for four days. Protecting them from the consequences of something I had done.

"Sophia," I said.

"I mean it Damien," she said. Steady and clear. "I need you to agree."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"In public," I said.

Her eyes stayed on mine.

"Agreed," I said.

She nodded and picked up her mug and looked at her phone and I looked at her and thought about twenty-seven years of walls and a rule I had never once broken and the specific way this particular woman made both of those things feel very far away.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Zane. The brother who stayed quiet and saw everything.

One line.

The accident that killed Sophia's parents. It wasn't an accident. I have proof. Come to my office now.

I stared at the screen.

Then I looked at Sophia sitting across from me with her mug and her composure and her mother, whom she still clearly missed.

I put the phone face down on the counter.

Whatever Zane had found, whatever was coming, she wasn't ready for it yet.

And for the first time in my life, I wanted to protect someone from the truth instead of just handing it to them because that was efficient.

I stood up.

"I have to check something," I said.

"Okay," she said without looking up.

I walked out.

And I stood in the hallway for a moment with Zane's text burning in my pocket and thought about a woman who had spent three years being told she came from nothing.

And how much worse it was going to get before it got better.