The name Claire hung in the air between us like a poisoned mist, cold and suffocating. The festive roar of the Union League Club ballroom, the clinking of crystal, the rhythmic swell of the string quartet seemed to mute into a dull, underwater throb.
Damon's hand on my waist didn't just tighten; it turned to iron, his fingers pressing into the silk of my gown with a force that bordered on painful.
I could feel the heat radiating off his 6'3" frame, but his expression had gone completely glacial. His jaw was set so hard I thought the bone might crack under the pressure. Marcus, the man with the sneer, watched us with a predatory delight, his eyes darting to me to catch the exact moment my composure shattered.
"Who is Claire?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper, yet it felt like a shout in the sudden, electrified tension.
"No one you need to worry about," Damon said, his voice a low, vibrating growl that vibrated against my side. He didn't look at me. He kept his coffee-brown eyes pinned on Marcus with a look that promised a slow, corporate execution.
"We're leaving, Marcus. And if you ever mention her name in my presence again, I'll make sure your firm's credit line is liquidated by morning. I will erase you from this city."
Marcus didn't flinch. He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss that made my skin crawl. "Careful, Elena. Damon likes things that are broken. It makes them easier to shape.
Just ask the girl who came before you. Oh, wait…you can't. She's currently tucked away in a private wing of a sanitarium, staring at walls because she couldn't handle the weight of being a Thorne 'accessory'."
Before Marcus could finish, Damon's hand left my waist. In a blur of movement too fast for the eye to follow, he had Marcus by the lapels of his expensive tuxedo, shoving him back against a marble pillar with a sickening thud. The sound of the impact drew a dozen gasps from the nearby socialites, the music sputtering into an awkward silence.
"Damon, stop!" I hissed, grabbing his arm. His muscles felt like braided steel beneath my fingers. He looked truly capable of violence, a dark, primal side of him finally breaking through the billionaire facade. "People are watching! The board is right there! You're proving him right!"
Damon stayed frozen for a second, his eyes wild and dark, before he slowly released his grip. He smoothed his own jacket with trembling hands, his breathing ragged.
"The car. Now," he commanded, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the exit. He didn't wait for me to agree. He simply dragged me through the crowd, his shadow looming large against the gold-leafed walls as we fled the lions' den.
The ride back to the penthouse was a hollow, haunting contrast to the ride there. The silence was no longer charged with the electric attraction of the elevator; it was suffocating, filled with the ghosts of secrets I wasn't supposed to know. The rain lashed against the windows of the Escalade in sheets, mirroring the chaos in my mind. Damon sat as far from me as possible, his silhouette dark against the blurred, neon skyline of Michigan Avenue.
"Tell me," I said finally, my voice echoing in the leather-bound cabin. "I signed a contract. I'm playing a part that could ruin my life. I deserve to know what I'm walking into. Was there another girl? Another... arrangement?"
Damon didn't answer until we were safely behind the soundproof glass of the elevator, rising sixty-eight floors above the world. When the doors slid open, he strode into the living room and went straight for the decanter, pouring himself a double bourbon with hands that were visibly shaking.
"Claire was the daughter of my former business partner," he said, his back turned to me. "She was fragile. She had a history of... instability that her family tried to hide. I didn't hire her, Elena. I loved her. Or I thought I did."
He turned around, his coffee-brown eyes filled with a raw, agonizing pain that made my heart ache despite my anger.
"The board didn't like her. They thought she made me look 'human,' which to them means weak. They used her past to humiliate her, leaking stories to the press until she had a complete mental break. They did it to get to me. And I let it happen because I was too busy protecting the Thorne name."
He took a long, jagged swallow of his drink. "Marcus thinks I broke her. The truth is, I just wasn't strong enough to protect her. That's why I chose you. Because you're not fragile. You're a fighter. You threw a hundred thousand dollars in my face, Elena. I knew the board couldn't break a woman like you."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. He hadn't chosen me for my beauty or my hourglass curves. He had chosen me as a shield. I was a soldier in a war I didn't understand, wearing a silver gown as my armor.
"I'm sorry about Claire," I said softly, stepping toward him. "But you should have told me. We're supposed to be a team."
Damon looked at me, his gaze softening for a fleeting moment. He reached out, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw, and for the first time, his touch wasn't possessive,it was desperate. "I didn't want the ghost of her to touch you. I wanted you to be the one thing in my life that wasn't tainted by this company."
The night should have ended there. I should have gone to my room, stripped off the heavy silk, and slept. But sleep was a stranger to me now. As I walked toward my suite, I noticed the heavy mahogany door to Damon's private study was slightly ajar, a sliver of blue light spilling onto the obsidian floor.
Curiosity, fueled by the adrenaline of the night and Maya's warnings, pulled me inside. The room smelled of old paper and expensive tobacco. On the massive desk sat a laptop, its screen still glowing. And next to it, a stack of manila folders labeled VANCE.
I shouldn't have looked. I knew the moment I touched the paper that I was crossing a line I could never uncross.
I flipped open the top folder. It wasn't about the merger. It wasn't about my credentials. It was a dossier on my father.
There were photos of him in a small town in Indiana I didn't recognize. Photos of him at a gambling table in an underground club. And at the bottom, a series of bank transfers. My heart stopped. The transfers were dated over the last three months—the exact three months my life had fallen apart. Large sums of money flowing from a Thorne Industries subsidiary into the private offshore account of the man who had abandoned me.
The realization hit me like a physical blow, knocking the wind from my lungs. My father hadn't just "abandoned" us. He hadn't just left us with debt.
Damon wasn't paying off my debts to save me. He was the one who had bought my father's debts in the first place. He had engineered my family's ruin over the last year, slowly squeezing my mother's healthcare funds and pressuring my father's creditors, creating the very "desperation" that led me to his limo that morning.
He didn't find me by accident on LaSalle Street. He had hunted me. He had created the "swamp creature" just so he could play the hero and offer to save her.
"Find what you were looking for?"
I spun around, the folder slipping from my numb fingers and scattering papers across the floor. Damon was leaning against the doorframe, his tuxedo jacket discarded, his white shirt unbuttoned to reveal the hard, muscular lines of his chest. The shadow of his 6'3" frame swallowed the light of the hallway. He wasn't the grieving man from the living room anymore. He was the machine again.
"You did this," I whispered, my voice trembling with a rage so hot it felt like ice. "You ruined my family. You made my mother sick with stress because she couldn't afford her medicine. You drove my father away. All of it... just to get me into this house?"
Damon didn't deny it. He walked into the room, the moonlight catching the predatory, possessive glint in his eyes. He stopped just inches from me, his heat a physical weight.
"I told you, Elena," he said, his voice a low, terrifying hum that sent shivers down my spine.
"I do results. And I've wanted you since the moment I saw your photo in your father's file six months ago. I did my research on you, I knew you weren't the type of woman who would want me even if I had all the money in the world.The contract isn't just for a fiancée. It's for you. All of you. And now that you've signed... you belong to me."
He reached out, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck, forcing me to look up into his dark, coffee-brown eyes. "You wanted to save you
r mother? Well, she's saved. But the price, Elena... the price is you."