Bitter inheritance

chapter 2

### Chapter Two: The Arrangement

The auction house sat on the corner of two streets that had once been friendly rivals and were now simply rivals. Ledger & Cross occupied three floors of restored Georgian brick, all soft lighting and hushed carpets designed to make people feel important enough to spend obscene amounts of money on other people's dead relatives' belongings.

Elena hadn't set foot inside in five years. Walking through the door now felt like walking into a crime scene she'd been forced to help investigate.

"You kept the same receptionist," she said, if only to have something to say that wasn't *I can't believe I'm doing this.*

"Marguerite doesn't age. It's unsettling." Damian held the door to his office, and something in her chest tightened at the old, unwanted familiarity of it — the same gesture he'd made a hundred times when they were seventeen and stupid and always finding excuses to be in the same room.

His office told her nothing about who he'd become. No photographs. No warmth. Just ledgers, a wall of locked cabinets, and a desk clean enough to perform surgery on.

"Here's how this works," he said, closing the door. "We co-sign the transfer. Then, if you want, you never have to see me again. I'll buy out your share at a fair valuation, or you can sell it elsewhere. Either way, you walk."

"That's generous of you." She didn't bother hiding the venom. "Considering."

"Considering what?"

"Considering your father ruined mine and you're offering me a check like that fixes it."

Something flickered behind his eyes — not guilt, exactly. Older than guilt. "You think I don't know what my father did?"

"I think you benefited from it. Isn't that the same thing?"

"No," he said, low and even. "It is not the same thing. But I'm not interested in re-litigating a decade of history in this office. You want your money. I want this finished cleanly. Sign the transfer, Elena."

She should have signed it. She meant to sign it. Instead, her eyes caught on the single item on his desk that didn't fit the sterile pattern — a small brass compass, tarnished with age, the kind that had sat on her father's desk for as long as she could remember.

"Where did you get that?"

Damian followed her gaze and, for the first time, looked almost human. Almost sorry. "Your father left it to me. In a separate letter. I didn't know how to give it back without you asking questions I wasn't ready to answer."

"Then answer them now."

He was quiet for a long moment. "Not today. Today, just sign."

She didn't sign. She left the compass on his desk and the papers unsigned in her bag, and she told herself it was strategy, not curiosity, not the old familiar ache of wanting to know a secret only he could give her.