Vows of Vengeance

Chapter Four - Familiar

Damian Voss had learned how to live with a ghost.

He had not learned how to stop seeing her.

For five years, Elena had existed in the spaces between things: the empty side of his bed, the silence after a door closed, the second cup of coffee he sometimes poured before remembering there was no one waiting for it.

In every room, he instinctively looked for pale green eyes before remembering that the woman who owned them was dead.

He had stopped expecting grief to disappear. It had simply become quieter. More disciplined.

Like everything else inside him.

Until Vera Kane walked into his house.

Now the ghost had a face again.

Damian sat behind his desk with Vera’s file open in front of him. Her name remained Vera Kane. Her age remained twenty-seven. Her history remained clean enough to be believable.

There was nothing in the file connecting her to Elena Rossi.

Nothing.

His fingers found the signet ring and turned it slowly.

He hated that he was doing it. He hated even more that he knew why.

Five years ago, Elena had been twenty-two when she married him. She had hated the arrangement at first.

So had he.

The marriage had been a truce dressed in silk and expensive flowers. Two families that had spent years distrusting each other had decided that putting their heirs in the same house would make peace easier to maintain.

They had been wrong about many things.

They had been right about one.

Damian and Elena had eventually become the only part of the arrangement that felt real.

He remembered her suspicion, his impatience, and the arguments over nothing. She had accused him of treating every conversation like a negotiation. He had accused her of refusing to listen.

Once, she had thrown a cushion at him.

He had caught it.

She had laughed.

He remembered that laugh more clearly than he remembered some people’s faces.

His thumb stopped against the ring.

Elena had always noticed when he turned it. She would reach across the table, catch his hand, and stop his fingers.

“You’re doing it again.”

He had pretended not to know what she meant.

She had always known he was lying.

Damian closed the file.

He should not be thinking about her. Not because of a woman who happened to have the same eyes.

That was all Vera was.

A coincidence.

Grief was a skilled liar. It took fragments of the past and dressed strangers in familiar faces.

After Elena died, he had once thought he heard her voice in a crowded restaurant. He had turned so quickly that the person beside him nearly spilled her drink.

It had been a stranger.

Of course it had.

Grief made ordinary things cruel.

Vera Kane was ordinary in that sense. A stranger. A woman with auburn hair, green eyes, and movements that reminded him of someone he had loved.

Nothing more.

He reopened the file.

The discrepancy Marcus had noticed bothered him. Not because it proved anything. It was simply a loose thread.

Vera’s professional history was clean. Too clean in places, perhaps, but not impossible. The dates, locations, and references aligned. He searched the names attached to her records and found nothing useful.

No connection to the Rossi family.

No obvious connection to the old conflict.

No reason for her to know him.

And yet she had looked at his ring. She had watched the room the way Elena used to. She paused before answering questions in exactly the same way.

Coincidence.

Damian shut the folder.

He refused to let grief make decisions for him.

The intercom sounded.

A problem had surfaced downstairs. Not an emergency, but something had gone wrong with a scheduled transfer, and the people responsible were already arguing about whose mistake it was.

Damian stood. His hand brushed his temple, where the small scar tightened whenever he frowned.

Another memory.

Another life.

He pushed it away.

When he reached the lower operations room, the atmosphere was tense. People moved quickly but without direction.

That was what bothered him.

Panic wasn’t dangerous.

Unorganized panic was.

A shipment was being held because the attached documentation did not match the information entered into the system. One record said the transfer was authorized. Another said it wasn’t.

If they forced the movement without resolving the discrepancy, they risked losing the shipment and drawing unnecessary attention. If they delayed too long, they would lose their window.

Damian looked around.

“Who approved it?”

No one answered immediately.

That was answer enough.

Then Vera stepped into the room.

She had been reviewing files nearby. Her gaze moved across the people gathered around the problem. She didn’t ask what had happened.

She watched.

Damian noticed.

Her eyes moved from the documents to the clock, then back again.

“Which record was entered first?” she asked.

One of the men nearest the table answered. Vera held out her hand.

“Show me.”

He did.

She read the information.

“These aren’t conflicting authorizations.”

Damian watched her. “What are they?”

“One is an authorization. The other is a confirmation.”

She pointed to the dates.

“The confirmation was entered after the authorization, but the system is treating it as a separate request because whoever logged it used a different reference.”

She looked up.

“Search the original reference number.”

Someone moved immediately.

“If it matches, the problem is administrative,” Vera continued.

“And if it doesn’t?” Damian asked.

Her eyes met his.

“Then we have a problem.”

The reference was found.

It matched.

The tension vanished almost instantly.

Vera didn’t celebrate. She simply looked back at the documents.

“Someone entered the confirmation incorrectly.”

Damian glanced at the person responsible.

“Fix it.”

Within minutes, the situation was resolved. People began leaving, but Vera remained.

Damian studied her.

“You saw that quickly.”

“It wasn’t complicated.”

“It had everyone else arguing.”

“They were looking for someone to blame.”

“And you?”

“I was looking for the mistake.”

Something in him almost softened.

Elena had been like that. Not exactly, but close. She had never cared who was responsible until after the problem was solved.

Damian pushed the thought away.

“You’re useful.”

Vera’s mouth curved slightly.

“I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

The words struck him.

Elena had once said something almost identical after he trusted her with something important.

He remembered standing in their kitchen while she crossed her arms, angry and determined to prove him wrong.

He had told her he wasn’t questioning her.

She had looked at him for several seconds.

“Then stop looking at me like you expect me to disappoint you.”

Damian stared at Vera.

She noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The word came too quickly.

Her eyes narrowed.

He turned away and walked upstairs. Vera followed several steps behind.

He could feel her presence.

That was another problem.

Elena had always walked slightly behind him when she was annoyed.

Damian almost stopped.

No.

Enough.

He entered his office. Vera remained at the doorway.

“You wanted something?”

“I didn’t ask you to follow me.”

“I assumed you were going to review the reports.”

“I was.”

“Then I can leave.”

He should have let her.

Instead, he said, “Stay.”

The word hung between them.

Vera stepped inside.

Damian sat. She remained standing.

He opened the operational report.

“The error should be corrected within the hour,” she said.

“I know.”

“You don’t look satisfied.”

“I’m not.”

“Why?”

Because you look like my wife.

Because you move like her.

Because I have spent five years trying to accept her death, and every time you walk into a room, something inside me refuses.

He said none of it.

“I don’t like mistakes.”

“Neither do I.”

He almost smiled.

Instead, he reached for his ring.

Vera’s eyes dropped to his hand.

There.

Again.

She noticed.

Elena always noticed.

Damian turned the ring once. Vera looked away.

Something cold moved through him.

He opened another file.

“What made you choose this line of work?”

“Practicality.”

“That’s vague.”

“So was the question.”

His eyes lifted.

She met his stare.

For one moment, the exchange felt impossibly familiar: the ease, the resistance, the way she never seemed intimidated by him.

Elena had never been intimidated by him either.

She had challenged him even when everyone else stepped carefully around him.

Damian looked away.

He had spent five years carrying her absence like a second skeleton. He had never remarried, never seriously considered it.

People assumed it was loyalty.

It wasn’t that simple.

He had loved Elena.

That was the simplest and most painful truth.

His grief had never turned into hatred. It had turned inward.

He had blamed himself in ways he never admitted aloud. Not because he believed he had killed her, but because he had made choices. He had believed he knew what was best. He had acted.

And Elena had paid for consequences he had never been able to fully explain.

Sometimes, in the darkest hours before morning, he wondered whether protecting someone without giving them the choice to protect themselves was simply another form of betrayal.

He had never let himself finish that thought.

He wasn’t going to start now.

He closed the report.

Vera was watching him.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“So are you.”

Damian went still.

For a moment, neither moved.

Then Vera gave him the smallest smile.

It wasn’t flirtation.

It was challenge.

Something Elena used to do.

His chest tightened.

Vera turned toward the door.

“I’ll leave you to your work.”

She reached for the handle, then stopped.

“If you keep searching for a reason to distrust me, you’ll eventually find one.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t distrust you.”

“Not yet.”

She left.

The door closed.

Damian remained seated, his hand finding the signet ring. He turned it once, twice, then stopped.

He opened the drawer and pulled Vera’s file toward him.

He stared at the woman he had never met, the woman who had somehow walked into his life carrying pieces of his dead wife with her.

He told himself it was grief.

It had to be.

Elena was dead.

Vera Kane was not Elena.

He repeated it until the words almost became convincing.

Then he remembered Vera’s phrase.

I’ll try not to disappoint you.

Damian froze.

It was casual. Harmless.

But Elena had used the same construction whenever she was trying to hide that something mattered to her.

The memory came without warning.

Elena standing in the doorway, her hair loose around her shoulders, pale green eyes bright with anger and hurt.

He had told her he trusted her.

She had looked at him for a long time.

Then she had said the words.

“Don’t make me regret trusting you.”

Damian’s breathing slowed.

His scar pulled tight near his temple. His fingers closed around the signet ring until the metal pressed painfully into his skin.

Coincidence.

It had to be.

But for the first time, Damian could no longer make himself believe it.