Chapter 5 5

CHAPTER FIVE: EVERYTHING HE NEVER TOLD ME

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Darkness swallowed the study whole, and Damian was moving before I'd fully processed what had happened, pulling me away from the tall windows with a grip that brooked no argument.

"Backup generators should trigger in thirty seconds," he said, low and controlled despite the tension radiating off him. "If they don't, that means Viktor's people cut them manually, which means they're already inside the perimeter."

"Comforting."

"I didn't say it to comfort you."

The generators did not trigger. Thirty seconds bled into sixty, and Damian's grip on my arm tightened as the first sound of breaking glass echoed from somewhere on the ground floor, followed by the unmistakable, measured tread of multiple people moving through the house with purpose.

"Panic room," he breathed, already pulling me toward a section of bookshelf that swung open at his touch, revealing a narrow staircase leading down. "Now."

"I'm not hiding while you deal with this alone."

"This isn't the time to argue about it."

"It's exactly the time." I planted my feet, refusing to be pulled further despite every survival instinct screaming at me to simply run.

"Nine years, Damian. You've made every decision about my safety without asking me once. I am done being managed. Tell me the actual plan or I find my own way out of this house."

Something flickered across his face, frustration and something rawer beneath it, and he made a decision in the space of a single heartbeat.

"Fine. The panic room has a secondary exit through the wine cellar to a service road half a mile out. If we're separated, you go there, you go alone, and you do not wait for me."

"That's not a plan, that's a eulogy."

"It's the only version I've got right now."

We made it halfway down the staircase before the study door above us splintered inward, and I heard Viktor's voice for the first time, smooth and unhurried in a way that made my skin crawl considerably worse than his men's earlier intimidation had.

"Running already, Damian? I expected more of a fight from the son of the man who taught me everything I know about making problems disappear."

"Viktor." Damian's voice had gone flat, controlled fury replacing the earlier urgency entirely. "You're trespassing on private property with an armed team. I'd suggest you reconsider your evening."

"I'd suggest you reconsider yours." Footsteps on the staircase above us, unhurried, confident. Every step landed with the deliberate patience of a man who already knew exactly how this particular conversation was going to end and saw no reason to hurry toward it.

"I have spent nine years watching you play protector to a girl whose father I had killed myself, Damian, and I confess I never once expected the irony to become quite this delicious. Does she know yet? That the order came from me, not your father at all? That your entire nine years of guilt has been built on a story I let you believe because a guilty man is so much easier to manipulate than an innocent one?"

I felt Damian go rigid beside me, the full weight of that revelation landing visibly even in the dim emergency lighting. "You let me believe I was responsible."

"I encouraged it, certainly. Guilt makes people predictable, Damian. It made you predictable for nine entire years, right up until a con artist walked into your gala and started asking questions I would have preferred remained buried considerably longer." Viktor's voice had reached the top of the staircase now, close enough that I could hear the smile in it. "Marcus Reyes was feeding information to both of us, did you know that? Playing your father's organization against mine for nearly a year before either side realized we shared the same source. I simply reached the obvious conclusion first. Loose ends are dangerous. I removed one."

"And his daughter," I said, finding my voice despite the fear currently trying to close my throat entirely.

.

"What exactly did you want with me tonight."

"Insurance, initially. A convenient piece of leverage against a man who never quite stopped hovering at the edges of your life no matter how carefully I positioned myself to end that particular obsession." Viktor's footsteps had stopped just above us, close enough now that I could see the edge of his shadow against the stairwell wall.

"Then you walked into that gala on your own initiative, hired by an intermediary I never actually controlled, and I realized the moon goddess, or fate, or whatever you'd prefer to call it, had simply handed me an opportunity I hadn't even needed to engineer myself."

"You didn't hire me for tonight's job."

"No." Something in his tone shifted, genuine surprise threading through the confidence for the first time. "Which raises a rather interesting question, doesn't it, about who actually did, and why, if not me."

The implication landed like a physical blow, someone else entirely orchestrating tonight's collision, someone neither Damian nor Viktor had accounted for, and I had exactly no time to process that horror before Viktor's shadow moved decisively down the final steps toward us.

Damian shoved me hard toward the panic room door, his own body angling between me and the staircase with a finality that left no room for argument this time. "Go. Now."

"Damian."

"I mean it, Dahlia. Whatever happens next, you go, you don't stop, and you don't come back for me." His eyes met mine for one final, charged second, nine years of distance collapsing into a single desperate look that told me everything his careful control had never once let him say out loud.

"I am not losing you the same way I lost your father. Not tonight. Not ever."

The panic room door began sliding shut between us on its automatic timer, and through the narrowing gap I watched Viktor's shadow reach the bottom step, watched Damian plant himself directly in the path between that shadow and the closing door, and heard, right as the mechanism sealed with a heavy, final click, the unmistakable sound of a struggle breaking out in the dark.

I pressed my palms flat against the cold steel door, useless, straining to hear anything through the sudden, suffocating silence beyond it, grunts of impact, a body hitting the wall hard enough to shake dust loose from the ceiling above me, Viktor's voice rising once in genuine surprise before cutting off entirely.

"Damian." My voice came out cracked, useless against a door built specifically to keep sound from passing through it. "Damian, answer me."

Nothing answered but silence, stretching long enough that my chest had begun aching with the effort of not screaming his name a second time, a third, a fourth, some old, exhausted part of me already bracing for a grief I had spent nine years learning far too well how to survive.

I stood alone in the sudden, suffocating silence of the panic room, Damian's last words still ringing in my ears, Viktor's revelation about my father's true betrayal still unraveling every certainty I'd built my entire adult life around, and a considerably more terrifying question looming over all of it now that I had no way to answer trapped behind a sealed door.

If Viktor hadn't hired me for tonight's job, and my father had been playing both sides for nearly a year before his death, then someone else, someone I hadn't even considered yet, had spent considerable time and money maneuvering me directly into the middle of a war between two dangerous men.

And whoever that was, they were still out there, and I had absolutely no idea whether the muffled, violent sounds coming from the other side of that sealed door meant Damian Cole was about to walk through it alive, or not at all.

Fucking hell!