When he spoke, his voice was — not broken. Damien Cole was not a person who broke in the conventional sense. But it was unguarded in a way that was its own kind of vulnerable.
"I spent six years," he said slowly, "trying to clean up what I thought my father had built." He looked at the harbour. "I restructured the company. I built the Iron Cross to pull Lia out. I set up the bait to catch Voss. I managed every piece of it trying to—" he stopped. "Trying to be the person who fixed what his family broke."
"I know," I said.
"And the whole time," he said, "the person who built the worst of it was watching me try to fix it." A pause. "She was watching me work. And she had built the tools specifically so I couldn't work fast enough."
"Yes," I said.
He looked at his hands.
"My mother," he s
