His Forbidden Karma

The Part He Left Out

For several seconds, I forgot how to breathe.

The photograph lay between Damian and me, its edges curling beneath my fingers. My father stood outside Blackwood House, one hand tucked into his jacket pocket, his face turned slightly toward whoever had taken the picture.

He looked alive.

Not like the man I remembered from those final weeks, exhausted and distracted, carrying the weight of a company collapsing around him. Not like the man I had imagined during seven years of unanswered questions.

He looked ordinary.

As though he had somewhere to be afterward. As though he had expected to come home.

Beneath the photograph, in black ink, were four words.

He left willingly.

"Tell me that's a lie."

My voice came out quieter than I intended.

Damian stood on the other side of the desk, his attention fixed on the photograph.

"I don't know who wrote that."

"I didn't ask who wrote it."

I pushed the photograph toward him.

"I asked you to tell me it's a lie."

He said nothing.

That silence hurt more than I wanted to admit.

For seven years, I had survived on the belief that someone had taken my father from me. It was the only explanation that made sense of the abandoned car, the frozen accounts, the letters declaring him presumed dead, and the absence of a body.

Now someone was suggesting he had chosen to leave.

Chosen to leave my mother.

Chosen to leave me.

I curled my fingers around the edge of the desk.

"Did my father leave that house willingly?"

"I don't know."

A short, bitter laugh escaped me.

"You're remarkably comfortable saying that for someone who was there."

"Karma."

"Don't use my name to soften an answer you refuse to give me."

His jaw tightened.

I picked up the photograph and slipped it into the envelope.

"You recognized me the moment I walked into your office. You knew why I came here. You've been watching me investigate your family, and every time I get close to something important, you decide what I can and cannot know."

"I have never stopped you from looking."

"No. You just keep moving the truth out of reach."

For the first time, his composure slipped. Not much, but enough for me to notice.

I stepped around the desk.

"At 11:42 p.m. on October fourteenth, Adrian called you. The call lasted eleven minutes and forty-three seconds. You told me he warned you not to return to the house because someone was waiting for you."

"Yes."

"Then you told me you stayed at the house until nearly two in the morning."

"Yes."

I stared at him.

"You went back anyway."

His eyes held mine.

"At 11:54."

The minute settled between us.

"You returned eight seconds after the call ended?"

"Approximately."

"And somehow that didn't make it into your story when I asked what happened that night."

"I left it out."

"Why?"

"Because I knew you'd go looking for whoever was there."

"That's rather presumptuous of you."

"You were already investigating a disappearance that had lasted seven years. I wasn't going to hand you another reason to walk into danger."

"That decision wasn't yours to make."

"No," he said. "It wasn't."

His agreement robbed me of the satisfaction of another argument.

I studied him carefully.

"What happened when you got there?"

"I saw someone through the glass near the entrance to the study. I couldn't make out their face. By the time I reached the door, they were gone."

"You searched the house?"

"Every room I could access. Then the grounds."

"And?"

"The study had been disturbed. One of the drawers was open. Papers had been scattered across the desk, and a space in the dust suggested something had been removed."

"What was missing?"

"I didn't know what had been there before. I couldn't tell you what was gone."

It sounded plausible. That didn't make it true.

"Did you find Adrian?"

"No."

"Your father?"

"No."

"And my father?"

Damian's expression changed.

"I had seen him earlier that evening. He was alive when I last saw him."

"That isn't what I asked."

"I know."

He drew a slow breath.

"I didn't find him that night."

The room seemed to tilt slightly.

I gripped the envelope tighter.

"Did he tell you he was leaving?"

"He said he had something to finish."

"Was he afraid?"

A pause.

"Yes."

The word entered me quietly and settled somewhere painful.

My father had been afraid, and I hadn't known. I had been seventeen, irritated by his late nights and distracted answers, convinced that whatever trouble he was facing would eventually pass.

I had told him to call me when he got home.

He never did.

I swallowed.

"Did he mention me?"

"No."

I looked away.

There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask, but they crowded together until I couldn't separate one from another. Had my father known he wouldn't return? Had he left something behind for me? Had he been trying to protect us, or had he simply run out of choices?

And why, after seven years, was someone determined to make me believe he had abandoned us?

I forced myself to look at Damian again.

"Did you tell the investigators about Adrian's call?"

"Yes."

"The person you saw?"

"Yes."

"Then why does it feel as though everyone who investigated this case somehow managed to find nothing?"

"Because whoever was involved had time to hide what happened. And because the people who knew the most weren't all interested in telling the truth."

"That includes you."

His gaze didn't move from mine.

"Yes."

The admission landed harder than a denial would have.

At least a denial would have given me something to fight.

I slipped the photograph deeper into my bag.

"If you lie to me again, I won't give you another chance to explain."

"I understand."

"No, Damian. I don't think you do. You can lose your company, your reputation, your family name. Those things might hurt you. But I have spent seven years grieving a man I never got to bury. I won't let you decide which pieces of that grief I'm allowed to carry."

He took a step toward me, then stopped.

"I would never ask you to stop looking."

"You just tried to control how I looked."

"Because I don't want you hurt."

"And I don't want to be handled."

Something in his expression softened, though the tension remained in his shoulders.

"I know."

For a moment, neither of us moved.

I hated how much I noticed about him in the silence. The faint exhaustion beneath his eyes. The loosened tie. The way his fingers flexed once at his side, as though he wanted to reach for me but understood that he had no right.

He looked less like a man who controlled everything and more like someone who had spent years trying to contain a disaster that had never stopped spreading.

I wasn't ready to feel sorry for him.

I wasn't sure I wanted to.

---

The drive back to Blackwood Holdings was silent.

Damian had offered to take me home. I refused. I wasn't ready to sit beside him in a car and pretend the ground beneath our relationship hadn't shifted.

He didn't argue. He simply drove us back to the office, his hands steady on the wheel.

When we entered his office, I went straight to the window.

Kingston glittered beneath us, busy and indifferent. Somewhere below, people were going home, making dinner, calling their families. Ordinary things continued to happen while my entire understanding of my father threatened to unravel.

Behind me, Damian set two cups of coffee on the table.

"I didn't know what else to do," he said.

I turned.

"With what?"

"That night."

His fingers rested against the rim of his cup.

"Adrian was missing. My father was missing. Daniel had disappeared. Every explanation I was given contradicted the one before it, and every person who claimed to help wanted something from me."

"So you decided to keep everything to yourself."

"I decided that if I could find one answer, I could find the rest."

"And seven years later?"

"I still don't have the answers."

I studied him.

I had spent years imagining the Blackwoods as a single, impenetrable enemy. It was easier to hate a family than to consider that some of its members might have been frightened, deceived, or just as lost as I was.

But uncertainty wasn't innocence.

And pain didn't excuse what Damian had chosen to hide.

"You hired me because you recognized me," I said.

"Yes."

"You kept me close because you wanted to know why I came back."

"Yes."

"And now someone is threatening me because I'm investigating what happened to my father."

"That is my concern."

"Your concern?" I repeated. "Damian, I'm the one receiving photographs. I'm the one being told my father abandoned me. You don't get to turn this into a problem you can solve by locking me out of the room."

"I'm not trying to lock you out."

"Then stop deciding what I can handle."

He fell silent.

I expected another argument. Another polished explanation designed to make his choices sound reasonable.

Instead, he said, "Tell me what you need from me."

The question caught me off guard.

"The truth."

"Even if it makes me look guilty?"

"Especially then."

He nodded once.

"Then trust what I can prove, not what I ask you to believe."

It wasn't an apology. It wasn't a promise that he would suddenly become an open book.

But it was the first thing he'd offered me that didn't sound like an attempt to control the outcome.

He reached toward me, slowly enough that I could step away.

His fingers brushed the back of my hand.

The contact was light, almost uncertain. His thumb rested against my knuckles, and for one foolish moment, the room seemed to narrow around that single point of contact.

I should have moved.

Instead, I let the silence stretch for one breath.

Then another.

His eyes lifted to mine, and I saw the question he wasn't asking.

I wanted to know what would happen if I stopped fighting the pull between us. I wanted to know whether the tension that had followed us through every argument and every late night would finally break if I let him come closer.

Then I remembered the photograph.

I pulled my hand away.

"This changes nothing."

"I know."

"You're still the man I came here to investigate."

"I know."

"And I still don't trust you."

His gaze remained steady.

"Then don't trust me because you want to. Trust what I can prove."

I picked up the envelope.

"Start proving things, Damian."

I left before he could say anything else.

---

I was halfway through the elevator lobby when my phone vibrated.

Unknown number.

One new message.

You believe the photograph because you want your father to be innocent.

I stopped walking.

Another message appeared.

Ask Damian what was missing from the study when he returned at 11:54.

My pulse quickened.

I looked back toward the executive floor.

The sender knew about the study. They knew Damian had returned. They knew enough to choose exactly which detail would make me question his account.

That didn't mean they were telling me the truth.

It meant they knew where to press.

My phone vibrated again.

This time, an image appeared.

An old wooden desk. A drawer hanging open. Dust disturbed across the surface, leaving a clean rectangular outline where something had once rested.

The angle was close enough to suggest the photographer had stood inside the room.

I enlarged the image.

On the desk's far edge was a small brass plate, its engraving blurred but unmistakable in shape. Beneath it lay a torn strip of paper.

I couldn't read the writing.

I could barely make out the rest of the room.

But I knew one thing.

The photograph had not been taken from the doorway.

Whoever had captured it had been inside the study.

My fingers tightened around the phone.

I typed a single question.

What was taken?

The reply arrived almost immediately.

Ask yourself why Damian never looked for it.

I stared at the words.

Damian had searched the house. He had searched the grounds. He had spent seven years looking for answers.

Unless there was something he had known was missing all along.

Something he had decided not to tell me.

The elevator doors opened behind me. I barely heard them.

I looked once more at the photograph, then at the message.

For the first time that night, I wasn't certain the anonymous sender wanted me to discover the truth.

They might simply want me to stop believing Damian.

And somehow, that possibility frightened me almost as much as the thought that he was lying.