Chapter 6
The man in the gray coat stayed at the gates for twenty minutes.
Kate watched from the second-floor window as Damon went out to meet him — no coat, no guards, his hands empty, the way you walk out to meet a dog that might bite. She couldn’t hear the words. She could read the shapes of them. The man handed over a folder. Damon opened it, read it slowly, and closed it. Then he said something that made the man go still. They stood there a long moment. Finally the man got back in the sedan and drove away.
Damon didn’t come inside right away. He stood at the gates, looking down at the folder, and Kate understood that the ground under them had just changed.
He found her in the kitchen an hour later, where Marisol had made her sit down and drink tea. He set the folder on the table between them.
“The senator is not going to play nice,” he said. “That was his chief investigator. He brought me a gift — a photograph of you, taken in the library the night of the gala, and a written statement from a valet who saw a caterer with a broken arm being put into a black car.” He looked at her. “He’s telling me he knows. He’s telling me he has enough to take you to court, to the press, to the FBI — and to destroy you, publicly, in the process.”
Kate’s hand trembled around the teacup. “Then it’s over. Everything you did — the letters, the women, the safety — it’s over.”
“It’s not over.” Damon tapped the folder. “It’s leverage. He thinks he’s cornered me. But a man who brings you a threat is a man who hasn’t used it yet — and a man who hasn’t used it yet is a man who wants something more than the threat itself. He wants his son back.”
“And you’re not going to give him his son.”
“I can’t. His son stopped existing the moment he put his hands on you. There’s no going back from that, and there’s no part of me that wants to.”
“Then how do we win?”
Damon was quiet. “I told you I was going to give him a choice. That was a lie. I’m going to give him the truth — the letters, the nine women, the confession his son wrote in his own hand — and I’m going to let him make the only choice he can make. He can watch his son’s legacy burn, or he can walk away and never speak another word about any of it, and spend the rest of his life knowing exactly what his money paid for. Either way, I get what I want.”
“Which is?”
“Your name never in the papers. Your mother’s bills paid. You safe.” He looked at her. “That’s the whole fight, Kate. Everything else is theater.”
Kate set down the teacup. “You said he knows about the library. He knows about the valet. If he decides to fight — if he goes to the press, or to the FBI — they’ll find the truth about me, and about what happened to his son. And you’ll go down with me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” she asked, and her voice cracked. “You’ve known me eleven months. You’ve spoken to me maybe eleven times. Why would you burn your whole world for me?”
Damon looked at her for a long moment. “You asked me that in the garden,” he said. “I gave you an answer about please and about hiding your arm. It was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.” He reached across the table and, very slowly, turned her cast over so it rested in his hand. “The whole truth is this. I spent my whole life being the thing people are afraid of. I’m the reason rooms go quiet. I’m the name mothers whisper to their daughters. And then you walked into a storage room with a broken arm and you were more afraid of losing your job than you were of me. You looked at me and saw the thing behind the name. No one has ever done that, Kate. Not my father. Not my grandmother. No one.” His voice went low. “You saw me. And I will burn down the entire world to keep the only person who ever has.”
Kate couldn’t breathe. The kitchen was very still. Marisol had vanished at some point, and it was just the two of them and the folder on the table and the weight of everything he had just said.
“Then let me help,” she said. “Not by hiding. By being in the room when you tell him. You said I’m the reason he’ll believe you. So let me be there.”
Damon studied her. “There’s a risk. If he sees you, he sees the damage he can do. He sees the leverage he thinks he has. He might—”
“He already has it,” Kate said. “He brought me the photograph. Hiding me won’t change what he knows. But seeing me — whole, and not afraid, standing beside you — that changes the story he tells himself about who wins.”
Damon was quiet a long time. Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth lifted. “You learned how to negotiate from my grandmother.”
“I learned how to survive from my mother.”
“Then we’ll go together.” He stood. “Tonight. He’s invited us to his house — he wants to show us his power, his collection, his family portraits. He’ll expect me to come alone and humble.” He looked at her. “He’s going to get a surprise.”
May you like
Kate stood. “What should I wear?”
“Something that says you’re not afraid.” He paused at the door. “And Kate — whatever happens tonight, you say nothing until I do. You watch. You remember. You’re my record again. That’s your power, and no one in that house will understand it until it’s too late.”
