DEVOUR ME, MR. KANE

Chapter Four

Damien Kane was on his phone when Elara walked into his office at midnight and threw her own phone onto his desk so hard it skidded to the edge.

The photograph of Theo was still on the screen.

He looked at it. Then he looked at her. Then he said one word into his phone. "Hold." And set it down.

"Someone photographed my brother on his bus tonight." Her voice was not shaking. She had made a decision in the elevator on the way up that she was not going to shake in front of this man again. "Eleven minutes after I arrived here. Which means whoever is doing this knew I moved in tonight. Which means either your building is compromised or you told someone and either way my seventeen year old brother is now in a photograph on a stranger's phone and I need you to explain to me right now what you are going to do about it."

Damien picked up his phone.

Not her phone. His.

He made one call. It lasted forty seconds. He spoke in a low voice and she caught four words. East side. Boy. Tonight.

He ended the call and set his phone down.

"Two of my people are already on the number eleven bus route. Your brother will have a shadow before he reaches your aunt's building." He looked at her. "He will not know they are there."

She stared at him.

"That was fast."

"I had people positioned when you made the call to him this afternoon." He stood and moved to the window, hands in his pockets, the city sprawling gold and indifferent behind him. "I was expecting a move tonight. I did not expect them to move on the boy this quickly."

The floor felt unsteady under her.

"You were expecting it and you did not tell me."

"I told you what you needed to know."

"My brother is seventeen." The calm she had promised herself cracked slightly at the edges. "He is seventeen and he takes the same bus home every single day and someone has been watching him and you knew a move was coming and you said nothing."

Damien turned from the window.

His face was doing the thing it did when he was making a calculation, still and focused and completely unreadable. Then he crossed the room and pulled out the chair across from his desk and gestured to it. Not a request. Not quite an order. Something in between that her body responded to before her brain had finished objecting.

She sat.

He sat across from her and leaned forward with his elbows on the desk and looked at her directly.

"His name is Harlow Vance."

The name landed like something physical.

"He has been a board member at Kane Global for nine years. He joined eight months after Lydia died. I did not connect it immediately because he covered his entry well, came in through a legitimate acquisition, brought revenue, built relationships." His jaw tightened. "By the time I understood what he was I had already given him access to everything."

"He is inside your own company."

"He was. His access has been restricted for six months. He knows I am building something against him. Which is why he is moving now, because a man with nothing left to lose stops being careful." He paused. "He was the last person to see Lydia alive. They argued the night of the fire. Three people witnessed it and all three recanted within a month. All three were paid from the same account."

Elara pressed her fingers flat against the desk.

"He ordered the fire."

"He ordered everything. The fire. The payments. The witnesses. Your father was one piece of a much larger machine." Something dark moved through his eyes. "He has been watching me build this case and he has been one step ahead because someone inside my legal team has been feeding him information. I found out four days ago."

Her head came up sharp.

"Four days ago. And you let me sign a contract and move in here without telling me any of this."

"I needed you here before he made a move."

"You used me as bait." The words came out flat. "You said as much in your office this morning but I did not fully understand what that meant until right now." She stood up. "You moved me in here knowing it would provoke him into acting. You positioned me like a piece on a board and my brother is now on that board too."

"Your brother was already on it." His voice was quiet. "The photograph of Theo was not taken tonight. The metadata on the image your unknown contact sent you shows it was taken eight days ago. They have been watching him for over a week. Moving here did not put him in danger. He was already there."

The breath left her body in a slow controlled exhale.

Eight days ago. Before her father's debt was even called. Before she had any idea Damien Kane existed as anything other than a name attached to a financial disaster.

"Who sent me those messages." She sat back down because standing felt like it required more energy than she had. "Walk away while you can. The photograph. Who is it."

"Someone who does not want you near me." He held her gaze. "Not Harlow. Harlow wants you exactly where you are. He wants me distracted and emotionally compromised and you are the most effective tool available for that." A pause that had weight in it. "The person warning you wants you out before Harlow uses you to get to me. Which means it is someone who knows exactly what Harlow is planning."

"Someone on your side."

"Someone who thinks protecting you means removing you." His eyes stayed on her face. "I disagree."

The room was very quiet.

Outside the windows the city hummed and pulsed and went about its business and in here there was just the desk between them and a silence that felt like it was made of something solid.

"You disagree," she repeated.

"You are more useful here than anywhere else. You are also safer here than anywhere else. Those two things happen to align." Something shifted in his expression, barely visible, like movement seen through glass. "That is not a coincidence. I made sure of it."

She studied his face for a long moment.

"The east wing," she said. "What is in there."

Every single thing in him went still.

It was not the stillness of a man caught off guard. It was the stillness of a man who had been expecting the question and had already decided his answer and was now measuring the exact distance between what he would say and what he would not.

"Nothing that concerns your duties."

"You have a photograph of a woman in there who looks like me." She watched his face. "I saw it this morning before Mrs Park found me in the hallway. I was not in the room long enough to read anything or touch anything. I just saw the photograph." She kept her eyes on his. "She looks like me, Damien. Not a little. Enough."

He stood up.

He walked back to the window and stood with his back to her and for a long time he said absolutely nothing. The city lights caught the line of his shoulders, the rigid set of his spine, the way his hands were in his pockets but not relaxed, gripped around nothing.

"Her name was Lydia Marsh," he said to the glass. "We met when I was twenty six. We were engaged for fourteen months before she died." A pause. "She had dark hair and she was stubborn about things that did not matter and she had a particular way of looking at someone when she thought they were wrong that made you feel it in your chest." Another pause, longer. "When your father's file crossed my desk two years ago there was a photograph attached. Standard documentation. I almost dismissed the whole thing."

He stopped.

She waited.

"You have her eyes," he said quietly. "Not the color. The way you use them."

The room was absolutely silent.

Elara sat with that information and turned it over carefully and felt the full weight of what it meant settle onto her shoulders like something she was going to be carrying for a long time.

She was not just bait.

She was not just a tool or a contract or a means to an end.

She was the closest thing to Lydia that Damien Kane had found in seven years and he had pulled her into his orbit and she did not know yet if that made her safer or more dangerous than she had ever been in her life.

Her phone lit up on his desk between them.

Same unknown number.

She reached across and turned it face up and read the message.

Four words again. Different ones this time.

He knows about Theo.

She looked up at Damien.

He was already looking at her.

"Show me," he said.

She turned the phone toward him.

He read it once and picked up his own phone and made a call that lasted six seconds and when he put it down his voice was completely level and that was somehow the most frightening thing she had seen all day.

"We leave in ten minutes," he said. "Theo needs to move locations tonight."

"You said he was safe."

"He was." Damien picked up his jacket. "Harlow just told someone he knows where the boy is. Which means my shadow on the bus route has been identified." He looked at her. "Get your coat."

She was already moving.