Inheritance Clause

Chapter Eight

When she came home from the gala Damian was waiting outside her building, so either Marcus had told him or he had simply known—just as he seemed to know various things about her life that weren't anything to do with him.

He was leaning against a car which he did not know, with both hands in his pockets and his jaw in a fixed position indicating that he had been standing there long enough to work himself in and out of a number of different opening remarks.

Instead of saying "hello", he said "you went".

I said to you that I was going to.

You said I was to be informed by text and then didn't reply when I asked how it had gone.' He got off the car, and under the streetlight she could see clearly how little sleep he had got, the same kind of worn-out look of exhaustion that she had seen in the mirror this morning. 'I've spent three hours imagining all the possible versions of tonight that have a bad ending, Ines. I just want you to tell me what actually happened.'

She thought about deceiving him the same way she had deceived Julian—by giving him some unimportant falsehood—and realized, with her heels sore and her nerves still affected by Vivienne's cold, exact threats, that she didn't have the strength to do it tonight.

She said that her aunt was aware of the amendment to the trust, knowing that it was she who had discovered it, and that the aunt had basically told her the protection comes to an end the moment she signs it, not being very careful about what she thought would happen afterwards.

Damian must have had some composure about him, even if his teeth were obviously cracked. "She told you that face to face? At her own gala, in a room full of witnesses?"

She is very skilled at saying dangerous things in a way that couldn't possibly be used as evidence of anything; after all, I'm a lawyer, Damian, and I know exactly how carefully she worded each sentence. Ines crossed her arms around herself, either because it was cold or because of something else—something she wasn't entirely sure about anymore. Moreover, she told me that Julian doesn't know any of it; according to her, it would be a shame to ruin his affection for me by giving him information to which he isn't, and I'm quoting her verbatim here, equipped to carry.

“You believe her?”

As to what I believe, that's the problem. She looked up at him, and all the careful distance she had maintained for the past three years suddenly seemed so thin when standing this close in the cold, with the truth now sitting directly between them rather than being concealed in the trust documents. I believe she's dangerous; I believe you've been spending three years trying to protect me from her in ways which I never asked for and never agreed to, even though I now understand the reason for what you did; and I believe that if I sign those papers tomorrow I'll be walking into whatever she's planning with nothing but my own instincts to defend me.

“Then don’t sign them.”

It isn't a strategy, Damian, it's simply you wanting the result that you'd already decided on before any of this took place tonight. She said it more sharply than she intended, but she needed him to hear it. I'm not staying married to you because your aunt is a threat; that isn't a marriage, it's a hostage situation with better catering.

There was a flicker in his face, fast and true, and for a moment he looked less like the composed, expressionless man from his office and more like the twenty-nine-year-old she had fallen in love with before all of this happened. "I don't want you to stay married to me out of fear. I never wanted that; I wanted—" He checked himself, his jaw tightening as some old sense of discipline came back, before allowing the sentence to continue. "It doesn't matter what I wanted. What matters now is keeping you alive long enough to have the opportunity to decide on anything else."

"Then help me to create my own protection—not yours, not some arrangement hidden in the trust documents which I'm not permitted to see until I happen upon them by accident—something that I really understand and can take a part in." She met his stare firmly, the lawyer's tone returning to steady her. "You aren't entitled to be making decisions concerning my safety without me being there, Damian. That's precisely what caused us to end up in this situation."

For a long time he kept quiet and then, when he did speak, there was a change in his voice — it had become less controlled and more spontaneous. "You're correct, I know you're correct. Over the course of three years I had been doing this all by myself and it had become a habit which I never managed to break, even though you were standing in front of me again." He breathed out slowly. "So what do you need?"

I have to find out precisely what Vivienne is capable of and I need you to tell me rather than going through Marcus or through some folder that you thought was safe enough for me to have access to. I want all the details. If you can manage it, this should be done tonight since I don't know how much time I actually have.

He nodded once and there was a slight relaxation in the way his shoulders were set, as if a decision which he had been holding back had now quietly been made. "Come up upstairs, I'll tell you all that I know, covering the entire three years in order and making no alterations to suit what I think you can handle."

At her own front door she paused, holding the keys, realizing just how close this situation now was to one that she had for three years told herself she didn't want any more.

“Damian,” she turned to look at him directly. “If I let you in tonight, that doesn’t mean— I have to make it clear that nothing is undone. I’m still angry and I’m still going to have to decide whether or not this affects what I do tomorrow.”

I know," he said, meeting her eyes steadily and without any attempt at drama. "I don't want tonight to erase anything that's already happened; all I'm asking for is the opportunity finally to get this part right since it's obvious that I messed up everything that came before."

She unlocked the door and allowed him to go in with her, and even if a rebellious part of her realised that his presence still fitted naturally into the small area of her apartment after three years and one crushing truth, she didn't look into it too closely.

She placed the folder from Marcus and the trust documents next to one another on her kitchen table — the same table at which she had spent that morning finding out just how far he had gone to keep her alive without her consent — and looked at him across the table, waiting.

“Let's begin from the very start,” she said, “and don't omit a single thing this time.”

And it was the first time in three years that he didn't.