13. The First Lie
The thumb drive was gone.
Ava woke to find the desk empty, the space where it had sat now bare and cold.
She shot up, the silk sheets slipping from her body, heart thundering. Her mind raced — had Damien taken it? Had someone else come into the room while she slept?
She reached for her robe and stormed out of the bedroom, her voice sharp and rising.
"Damien!"
She found him in the lower study, shirtless, bruised knuckles on one hand, his expression locked somewhere between fury and exhaustion.
He didn't even look surprised to see her.
"You're looking for the drive," he said.
Her jaw clenched. "You took it."
"I did."
"Why?"
"Because Helena never gives anything for free," he said flatly. "That drive was bait, Ava. There's a tracking device in the casing. She would've known the second you opened it."
Ava's stomach dropped.
"You're sure?"
"I had Lucien check it before dawn." Damien tossed a silver sliver of metal onto the table. "She's not just playing you. She's trying to corner me. It's a power play. One she's been planning for years."
"So everything she told me was a lie?"
Damien looked up, his eyes like frostbitten steel. "No. That's the worst part. Everything she told you was true."
Ava's breath caught.
"She's not just trying to ruin me," he continued. "She wants to own what's left when I fall."
"Why?"
"Because once, she was promised it all," Damien said coldly. "And I took it from her."
---
Later that day, Ava wandered the east wing, needing space.
She ended up in the library — a massive two-story room full of shadowed corners and forgotten volumes. She didn't come here often. Damien's mother had once loved this place, and Lisette rarely stepped foot inside it.
But something drew her in.
She found a photo album buried on the lowest shelf. Dusty leather. Gold corners.
Inside were pictures of Damien as a boy — laughing with a woman who could only be Cecilia Blackwood. She was radiant. Alive. Holding a boy who looked nothing like the man he'd become.
One photo made her pause.
It was a family portrait.
Cecilia. Damien. A young man standing beside them with dark eyes and an arm around Cecilia's waist.
Not Damien's father.
She checked the caption.
"Cecilia, Damien, and Thomas Vale."
A name she'd never heard before.
She snapped a picture with her phone and left the album on the table.
---
Back upstairs, she searched for anything connected to Thomas Vale.
There wasn't much. A few mentions in old business records. A partnership dissolved. A minor scandal swept under the rug.
But something caught her eye.
Boardroom Surveillance Log: 2004
Entry: Confidential.
Subject: Vale-Blackwood Incident.
Her heart raced.
The file was locked behind Damien's security clearance. She stared at the blinking prompt, knowing exactly what it meant.
She could walk away.
Or she could push the first real boundary of their trust.
Her fingers hovered.
She entered the override Lucien had once showed her — reluctantly, drunkenly — when he'd been trying to impress her during her first week in the house.
Access granted.
The footage flickered to life.
A silent, grainy video.
Damien — young, maybe sixteen. Cecilia. Thomas Vale shouting, pointing. Damien lunging. A gun on the table. A blur.
Then the screen froze on the image of Thomas bleeding from the chest, slumped forward.
Damien standing over him.
Hands red.
Cecilia screaming.
Ava slammed the laptop shut, gasping for breath.
What the hell had she just seen?
---
That night, Ava couldn't sleep.
She waited in the dark until Damien returned.
He looked worn — tie loose, collar open, his mouth a tight line.
"I had dinner with someone I haven't seen in a long time," he said.
"Who?"
"My father."
Ava sat up. "He's alive?"
Damien laughed bitterly. "Alive, yes. Human? Barely."
He poured himself a drink. "He wants to make a deal. He'll stay buried if I give him Helena."
"You can't," Ava said quickly.
"I know."
A pause.
"And what did you say?"
"I said no." Damien turned toward her. "But now he knows you're part of the equation. Which means you're a target."
Her heart sank.
Damien stepped closer.
"I've done things you haven't even begun to imagine," he said softly. "But the worst part? I don't regret them. Not when it brought me here. Not when it gave me this."
He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. His voice cracked, low and rough. "I don't care what you saw. I care if you leave."
"I'm not leaving," Ava whispered.
"Even now?"
"Especially now."
She rose on her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him like the sky was falling.
It might be.
But she'd rather crash with him than fly without him.
---