Chapter 14 — What Voss Knew
660 Words
The c***k, when it finally surfaced, came from a source Elena hadn't expected: a business reporter who called the Cole Industries press office asking, with the kind of pointed specificity that suggested a tip rather than a guess, whether it was true that Damian Cole's interest in Rossi Textiles predated the company's financial troubles by several years.
Damian came home that evening tighter than she'd seen him in weeks, jaw set, a folder of documents clutched in one hand that he set down on the kitchen counter like it weighed considerably more than paper should.
"What's that?" Elena asked.
"Evidence that someone's been feeding information to the press," he said. "Specifically information about how long I've been tracking Rossi Textiles' financials. Which means someone's also been feeding information about how long I've been tracking you."
Something cold settled in Elena's stomach. "How long is that, exactly? You've mentioned the fundraiser, recognizing me there. But Voss keeps implying there's more."
Damian was quiet for a long moment, and in that silence, Elena felt the careful equilibrium of the last three weeks shift under her feet, like ice she'd trusted a beat too long.
"I need you to understand something before I answer that," he said finally. "Everything I felt for you was real. Is real. But I also need to be honest with you, because I promised myself I wouldn't do to you what I did in the first three weeks of this marriage — let you find things out sideways, through other people, instead of from me directly."
"Damian." Her voice had gone very quiet. "How long?"
"I hired someone to look into your life five years ago," he admitted, the words coming out heavy, each one clearly costing him. "Not surveillance, exactly — nothing invasive, nothing that violated your privacy in any concrete way. But background. Where you worked. Whether you were happy. Whether you were seeing anyone." He wouldn't meet her eyes. "I told myself it was closure. That I just needed to know you'd turned out all right, that some part of my old life had survived what happened to my family, even if I couldn't be part of it. I told myself that for four years, and it might have even been true. But the fundraiser wasn't a coincidence, Elena. I knew you'd be there. I made sure I would be too."
The kitchen felt suddenly very small, the careful trust of the last three weeks collapsing under the weight of one more layer of concealment she hadn't been prepared for.
"So the recognition," she said slowly. "The way you looked at me that night, like it was fate, like it was some beautiful accident of circumstance—"
"Was still real," he said quickly. "The feeling was real. But the setup wasn't an accident. I engineered it, the same way I engineered the buyout, the same way I've apparently engineered every version of getting close to you that I've allowed myself since I was twenty-two years old sitting outside your father's house too ashamed to knock."
"You lied to me again," Elena said, and the betrayal in her voice was sharper this time, layered over the first one instead of separate from it. "Not about who you are this time. About how long you'd already decided all of this before I ever had a choice in any of it."
"I know."
"I need to leave," she said, already reaching for her coat, the trust she'd been slowly, carefully extending over the past three weeks curling back in on itself like something burned. "I need to not be in this apartment right now, Damian. I need to think, and I can't do that here, with you standing there looking like you expect me to forgive this too."
"Elena, please—"
"Don't," she said, already at the door. "You've had twenty years to plan every version of this conversation. Give me one night to catch up."
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