THE MAID'S FORCED VOW

Chapter Four

I stared at the screen until my eyes burned. My mother, younger than I had ever seen her, standing close to a boy who could only have been Damon Cross. Neither of them was smiling. It didn't look like a happy photo. It looked like a warning someone had taken and kept anyway.

"Where did you get this," I asked, though my voice barely worked.

"My father's private files," Damon said. "I found it three years ago. Around the same time you started working here."

My head snapped up. "That's not a coincidence."

"No," Damon said quietly. "It isn't."

He sat down across from me, close enough that I could see the exhaustion carved into his face, the kind that didn't come from missed sleep but from carrying something too heavy for too long.

"Your mother worked for my father before you were born," he said. "Something happened between them. I don't know everything, only pieces. But whatever it was, it's the reason he's spent years watching your family from a distance. Waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"I don't know yet. But when I found out you'd been hired here, I made sure you stayed close. Not because I wanted to use you." His jaw tightened. "Because I was trying to protect you from him."

My mind spun, unable to hold all the pieces still long enough to make sense of them. "Then who has Micah? If it's not you."

Damon's expression darkened. "That's what worries me. Because the only person I know cruel enough to plan something like this, precise enough to time it exactly when you'd be desperate enough to agree to anything, is a man I've spent my whole life trying to get out from under."

My stomach turned cold. "Your father."

Damon didn't answer. He didn't have to.

My phone buzzed once in my pocket, sharp and sudden in the silence. I pulled it out with shaking hands. A new message, no name attached, just three words glowing on the screen.

He is listening.

I looked up at Damon, and for the first time since I'd walked into his office, I saw real fear behind his calm.