TE BILLIONAIRE'S SECOND BRIDE

CHAPTER FIVE

Damian's POV

I have never been a man who doubts himself.

That is what people say. Damian Blackwood does not doubt. He does not hesitate. He does not feel. I built my life on those three sentences, because feelings wrecked my father, and doubt kills companies.

Two months after my wedding, I could not sleep.

I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about a cup of coffee with cinnamon.

I thought about a woman in a green dress, her curls loose, saying I am not a chair. A woman who held my hand in a hospital waiting room and would not let go.

I thought about her fingertip on the scar on my shoulder. Does it still ache when it's cold? No one had ever known that. Not my doctors. Not Celeste. Not even Grandmother.

I turned over and shut my eyes. Do not think about it.

The next morning, I sat at the head of the boardroom table on the sixty-first floor of Blackwood Tower. Behind me, the Hudson lay flat and gray under a low sky. Twelve people stared at me. Reginald sat at my right hand, smiling.

"The Reyes merger is delayed again," said the finance director. "Certain accounts show irregularities.”

"What kind?"

"Vendor payments. Nothing large individually, but constant. The Senator's lawyers are asking questions."

My back stiffened. Vendors. I had heard that word from her, in a basement, with tears on her face.

"Who approved them?"

The director shifted in his chair. "They carry your digital signature, sir."

Silence dropped on the table like a stone. Reginald laid a soft hand on my sleeve.

"Damian, my boy, surely a clerical error. Perhaps your wife's family could assist. Since they are so... financially experienced."

A cough. A pen clicked.

"My wife," I said, "knows nothing about Blackwood finance."

It came out cold. It came out in front of everyone. It came out because I was furious, because I no longer knew who was lying, because my whole life had started to feel like a house built on ice.

The boardroom door stood an inch open. In the gap, I glimpsed a flash of grey cardigan.

She had heard.

I told myself I didn't care. I told myself through the rest of the meeting, through lunch, through an afternoon of numbers that swam on my screen. I told myself she was a liar and a spy and that the memory of her hand in mine was only weakness.

At five, I gave up and went home.

I did not go to my own rooms. I went to my grandmother's.

Vivienne sat propped against pillows in her sitting room, in a pale blue robe, looking small. She looked a hundred years old.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thank you, Grandmother."

"Sit. You're making me nervous. Bring me the blue photo album from the third shelf."

"Which one?"

"The one your mother made. Before she left." She smiled faintly. "I want to see her face."

I found it. The cover had gone soft with age. I set it on her lap, and she turned the pages with a trembling finger. Me in a sailor suit, with a gap in my teeth. My father, alive, laughing. My mother, holding a birthday cake.

"Stop," Vivienne said. "This one. She took it the morning of the accident."

My stomach rolled. I never looked at photographs from that autumn.

My eyes went to the page anyway.

The lake lay flat and pewter-gray under a white sky. Frost furred the wooden dock. At the edge of the frame stood a girl in a bulky winter coat, her back half turned, a fishing pole in her hand. She had big, round shoulders and thick dark curls whipped loose by the wind. She was looking at the water.

On her wrist, caught by a stray gleam of sun, was a thin silver chain with one tiny moon.

I forgot how to breathe.

"Grandmother." My voice came from somewhere far away. "Who is this?"

"A neighbor's girl, I think. Your mother snapped her before the boat went out. She kept the picture because the light was pretty." Vivienne looked up. "Damian? What is it?"

I tilted the page toward the lamp.

I knew that jaw. I knew the tilt of her head. I knew the way her hand rose to push a curl behind her ear.

I knew her.

She had stood at a sink in her parents' kitchen, washing dishes, when I asked how she liked her coffee. She had walked down an aisle in a dress that would not close, saying vows to a man who could not remember her name. She had told me in the back of my car, in a green dress, I am a person.

Avery.

And with a crash like ice breaking, the memory came. Not the bracelet. The voice. Low, shaking, close to my ear in water so cold it stopped my heart. A girl's hands gripping my collar. A girl shouting my own name back at me as if she could haul me up by will alone.

Stay with me, Captain. Captains don't sink.

No one had called me Captain before that day. No one, since.

Until three weeks ago, in a dark bed, with her curls across my chest, when she whispered against my skin: Sleep, Captain.

You're safe.

I had been half asleep. I had told myself it was a pet name.

The album slid off Vivienne's lap and hit the floor.

"Damian!" She gripped my wrist with her thin fingers. "What have I done?"

"It was never Celeste," I said.

Her face folded. "Oh, my boy."

"It was Avery. It was always Avery, and I..." My voice broke like glass. "I shut her in a room at the end of a hall. I told her she was a piece of paper. I told twelve people she knew nothing."

"Damian, listen..."

I was already gone. I do not remember the stairs. I remember my shoes slamming on the marble, blood pounding in my ears, one thought beating like a fist against the inside of my skull.

Find her. Tell her. Fix it.

I threw open her bedroom door.

The room was empty.

The bed was made with hospital corners. The closet stood open, half bare. No suitcase. No laptop. No grey cardigan draped over the chair. The window was cracked open, and the curtain lifted and fell in the cold air.

On her pillow lay a plain gold wedding band.

Beside it lay a folded sheet of paper.

My hands shook so badly the page rattled. Her handwriting was small and neat, the way I remembered it from grocery lists and thank-you cards.

Damian,

I took nothing from you. I only wanted to help. I hope you find the person who is really stealing from your family. I hope you stay safe.

You said our marriage would last a year. I have decided to make it shorter.

… Avery

I read it twice. Then I noticed a small white box in the wastebasket beside the bed.

I pulled it out.

A pregnancy test. In the little window, two pink lines.

My legs gave way. I sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the box until the edges of my sight went dark.

She had found out. And she had not told me. She had known I would quote clause nine, no children, under any circumstances. She had heard me tell the board she knew nothing. And she had packed in silence, without leaving one word of blame.

She had not left because she hated me.

She had left because she was certain I would.

My phone buzzed against my thigh. I dragged it out with numb fingers.

BREAKING: Wife of Blackwood CEO Named in Multimillion-Dollar Embezzlement Scheme. Police Seek Avery Blackwood for Questioning.

Under the headline, they had used a photo from the gala, Avery in the green dress. Across it, in red letters, one word: WANTED.

Another message slid in below it. An unknown number.

Congratulations on the baby, Damian. She won't get far.

I stopped moving.

I had found that test sixty seconds ago. No one else in the world knew. Not Grandmother. Not my staff. Not the police.

A second message arrived. This one carried a photograph.

It showed Avery's bedroom, taken from the doorway behind me. The bed. The wastebasket. The window. And me, sitting on the mattress with that white box in my hand, my face turned toward the camera without knowing it was there.

The picture was timestamped thirty seconds ago.

I lifted my head, slowly, toward the empty hallway.

Someone was standing in my house, watching me, and they had been there the whole time.