THE BLACKSTONE'S RECKONING

Chapter Ten: The Name on the Papers

The silence in the small bedroom stretched long enough that Sofia finally broke it.

"Wendy. Say something. You're doing the face."

"Damien's name is on the transfer documents." Wendy's voice came out flat, distant, her mind already racing three steps ahead of her own shock. "Tobias says Richard filed the paperwork two days ago. Before Alexander told me anything. Before, I remembered a single thing."

Sofia's face went through several rapid emotions at once, confusion, then dawning horror, then something that looked almost like betrayal on Wendy's behalf despite the fact that it wasn't her heart on the line. "That doesn't make sense. Damien only showed up yesterday."

"I know."

"So either he's been in on this longer than he's let on," Alexander said slowly, working through it aloud, "or Richard used his name without his knowledge."

"Or," Wendy said, "Damien Cross is exactly as harmless and charming as he seems, and someone is using him as a very convenient piece of paper to hide behind."

She put the phone back to her ear. "Tobias. Pull everything on Damien Cross. Family, finances, and any connection to Richard beyond whatever business his father does. I want to know if he's a player in this or a pawn before I decide how to handle him."

"On it, boss."

She ended the call and stood there a moment, turning the information over the way she turned over every piece of a puzzle before deciding where it fit, cold and methodical even now, even with her chest still raw from a memory that had waited five years to surface.

"You think Richard's hiding assets behind him," Alexander said. Not a question.

"I think Richard just told us to our faces that he has protections in place. Lawyers, paper trails, and friends in useful places." Wendy's jaw tightened. "If he knew this confrontation was coming, even in some vague, contingency-planning way, he'd want the estate somewhere it couldn't be traced back to him personally the moment things went bad. A business associate's son, young, charming, not obviously connected to the Blackstone family. That's a very convenient name to put on a very convenient piece of paper."

"And if Damien doesn't know his name's been used that way?"

"Then he's about to become a problem for Richard instead of an asset." Something almost like satisfaction touched the corner of Wendy's mouth. "I'd actually enjoy watching that unfold."

Sofia, who had gone very quiet during this entire exchange, finally found her voice again, though it came out smaller than her usual bravado. "So if Damien's innocent in this... he's basically a target now, too. Richard's just handed him a legal mess he didn't ask for."

"Looks that way."

"That's..." Sofia hesitated, something complicated crossing her face. "That's actually kind of unfair. To him."

Wendy studied her friend for a long moment, filing away the flicker of concern that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the way Sofia's eyes had gone soft at the thought of Damien caught in the crossfire of a war he hadn't started.

"You feel for him," Wendy said quietly.

"I feel for anyone Richard Blackstone decides to use as a human shield. That's just basic decency." Sofia's chin lifted, defensive, though the colour rising in her cheeks told a slightly different story. "It has nothing to do with anything else."

"Sure."

"It doesn't."

"I didn't say a word."

"You did the eyebrow thing. I saw it." Sofia crossed her arms, flustered in a way Wendy had rarely seen from her, usually the one delivering commentary rather than receiving it. "Can we please focus on the actual crisis instead of whatever you think you noticed just now?"

Wendy let it go, filing the moment away instead for later, some quieter evening when the war wasn't quite so loud. "Fine. Focus. Alexander, I need you to reach out to your father's legal contacts. If Richard's forged or backdated any part of this transfer, we need people who can prove it fast before he has time to bury the paperwork deeper."

"Already on it." Alexander was already pulling out his phone, expression grim and focused. "My father's firm has handled worse than this. If there's a flaw in Richard's paper trail, they'll find it."

"Good." Wendy exhaled, steadying herself against the weight of everything still stacking up around her, grief and fury and strategy all tangled together into something that felt, finally, like purpose instead of chaos. "Then we move. Tonight, if we have to."

It was well past midnight by the time the house finally went quiet, Richard and Patricia retreated behind their bedroom door, the staff long since sent to their own rooms, the whole mansion settling into the particular stillness that came right before something broke.

Wendy found herself back in the garden, the same place Alexander had first told her the truth about her father, staring up at a sky gone thick with clouds, no stars visible at all.

"You should be resting," Alexander said, appearing beside her without her having heard him approach, which said something either about his stealth or about how deep in her own head she'd gone.

"I don't rest well the night before a war."

"Is that what this is? A war?"

"It's been a war for five years, Alexander. I just didn't know I was already fighting it." She glanced sideways at him, something in her chest still raw and open from everything the day had cracked loose. "Thank you. For telling me the truth, even when it would have been easier not to."

"I didn't do it because it was easy." His voice had gone quiet, careful. "I did it because you deserved to stop living a life that wasn't yours."

Something passed between them in the dark garden, charged and unspoken, five years of loneliness on her side and a lifetime of inherited duty on his finally colliding into something, neither of them had quite named yet.

Her phone buzzed again, breaking whatever moment had been building between them, Tobias's name flashing across the screen.

"Tobias. Please tell me you have good news."

"Boss." His voice had gone strange, tight in a way she'd never once heard from him in two years of working together. "I pulled everything on Damien Cross like you asked."

"And?"

"Boss, there's something wrong. His financials, his family history, none of it lines up with a business associate's son. I've been digging for an hour, and I can't find a single legitimate record of him existing before three years ago."

Wendy's stomach went cold. "What are you saying, Tobias?"

"I'm saying Damien Cross might not be who he says he is at all."