MARRIED TO THE DEVIL CEO

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A GHOST FROM BEFORE

I’ve never seen Damien afraid of anything.

Not the morning Amelia disappeared, when three hundred guests waited outside a locked door and he walked into that chaos like it was simply another problem to be solved. Not the night the lights went out and an alarm screamed through the whole house. Not once, in five months, have I seen anything crack the careful, controlled surface he wears like a second skin.

He’s afraid now.

I feel it in his hand, still locked around mine, the grip gone from protective to something closer to desperate. I feel it in the stillness of his whole body, the kind of stillness that isn’t calm at all, just fear wearing calm’s clothes because it doesn’t know what else to do with itself.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Damien says.

The man in the chair laughs, low and easy, like Damien has just told a joke rather than accused him of faking his own death. “I get that reaction more than you’d think.”

“Sir,” one of the security men says carefully, glancing between Damien and the seated stranger. “Do you want us to call the police, or—”

“No.” Damien’s voice comes out sharp, immediate. “Not yet. Leave us.”

“Sir, given the breach—”

“I said leave us.” He doesn’t raise his voice, but something in the way he says it sends both men moving toward the door without further argument, though I notice they don’t go far, just far enough to be out of earshot, close enough to still hear if something goes wrong.

Once the door clicks shut, Damien finally lets go of my hand, though he doesn’t step away from me. If anything, he angles himself slightly in front of me, like some old instinct in him decided, without asking permission, that I needed shielding from whatever is about to happen in this room.

“Explain,” Damien says. “Now. Before I let them call every authority I know.”

The man studies him a long moment, something almost fond in his expression, which makes it worse somehow, makes the whole situation feel more wrong than if he’d simply looked dangerous.

“You look like your father,” he says instead of answering. “Older than I expected. Time does that, I suppose.”

“You knew my father.”

“I knew your father very well.” He shifts slightly in the chair, wrists still bound in front of him, entirely unbothered by his own restraints. “Better than most people in your life would like you to know.”

“Who are you,” I ask, unable to stay silent any longer.

His eyes move to me for the first time, sharp and assessing, taking in far more than a simple glance should. “Ah. The wife. Or should I say—”

“Don’t,” Damien says, low and dangerous, cutting him off before he can finish the sentence. “Whatever you’re about to say. Don’t.”

The man raises his bound hands slightly, an easy gesture of surrender. “Fine. I’ll play by your rules, for now.” He looks back at Damien. “My name is Thomas Reyes. I worked for your father. Head of security, back when Blackwood Holdings was half the size it is now, back before the accident that supposedly took both your parents on that stretch of highway outside the city.”

“Supposedly,” Damien repeats, the word coming out strange, like it costs him something just to say it out loud.

“You never believed it was an accident,” Thomas says. “I know you didn’t. I read the reports you filed, years later, trying to reopen an investigation nobody wanted reopened. I know you spent your twenties chasing a truth everyone around you kept burying deeper.”

Damien doesn’t respond. His jaw is tight enough that I can see the muscle working beneath his skin, some old wound clearly being pressed on far harder than anyone in this room besides him fully understands yet.

“Why are you here,” Damien asks finally.

“Tonight. In my house. After twenty five years of being nowhere.”

“Because I finally have proof of what I’ve always suspected,” Thomas says, and something shifts in his voice now, urgency replacing the easy calm from before. “Your parents didn’t die in an accident, Damien. I’ve known that for twenty five years. What I didn’t have, until three weeks ago, was proof of who arranged it.”

The room goes very still.

“Who,” Damien says, and his voice has gone quiet in a way that frightens me more than shouting would have.

Thomas glances toward the door, toward the hallway beyond it, like he’s making sure no one else is close enough to hear what he says next.

“Someone very close to you,” he says. “Someone who’s been standing beside you your whole life, telling you he loved you like a son, while quietly making sure you never asked the right questions.”

I feel the blood drain from my own face before Damien even says the name out loud, some instinct in me already assembling the pieces from a kitchen conversation months ago, a warm laugh, a comment about hiding behind being liked.

“Richard,” Damien says.

Thomas nods slowly. “Your uncle.”

“That’s not possible.” Damien’s voice cracks slightly, the first real break I’ve heard in it since the wedding. “He raised me. He’s on the board. He’s the reason I survived any of it, after they died. He was the only person who—”

“He was the only person who benefited,” Thomas cuts in, gentle now, almost sorry to be the one saying it. “Think about it, Damien. Who inherited control of the company’s daily operations while you were too young to run it yourself. Who’s spent twenty five years making sure the audit committee never looks too closely at the shell accounts buried three layers deep in the books.

Who just happened to be the one to bring you tonight’s news about the woman living in this house, at the exact moment someone cut this house’s power and breached your gate.”

My stomach turns cold.

“He told you,” I say slowly, looking at Damien. “Tonight. He’s the one who told you someone was asking questions about me.”

“Yes,” Damien says quietly, already seeing where this is going before I finish saying it out loud.

“What if he wasn’t warning you,” I say. “What if he was distracting you. Getting you upstairs, away from the security office, away from whatever was about to happen at that gate.”

Thomas watches the realization land across both our faces with something that looks almost like relief, like he’s been waiting a long time for someone else to finally see what he’s seen for years.

“She’s smarter than the reports made her sound,” he says to Damien.

“Don’t talk about her,” Damien says, sharp again, protective in a way that sends something warm through my chest despite everything else happening in this room.

Thomas raises his hands again, conceding the point. “I came here tonight because I finally have documents. Financial records. A recorded conversation from twenty five years ago that I’ve kept hidden since the week your parents died, too afraid to come forward until I knew I could actually prove what I was saying instead of just accusing a powerful man with nothing to back it up.”

“Where are these documents,” Damien asks.

“Somewhere safe. Somewhere Richard doesn’t know to look.” Thomas’s expression turns grim. “I would have come to you months ago, quietly, through proper channels. But three weeks ago, someone tried to break into the storage unit where I kept them. I’ve been careful ever since. Tonight, when I saw your security patterns change, extra men, tighter perimeter, I knew something had shifted in this house. I took the risk of coming in person because I was running out of safer options.”

Damien is quiet a long moment, processing everything, and I can see him rebuilding twenty five years of grief and certainty in real time, watching a story he’s told himself his entire adult life crack open into something far more dangerous.

“If this is true,” Damien says slowly, “Richard has been in this house. In my life. For twenty five years. Sitting across from me at breakfast. Advising my board. Meeting my wife.”

His eyes find mine on that last word, something raw and afraid moving behind them that has nothing to do with the coldness he’s worn for months.

“He’s met her,” Damien says quietly. “He knows exactly who she really is. And I brought her into this house myself, without knowing what I was bringing her into.”

Thomas doesn’t offer comfort. He simply nods, grim and certain.

“Then I’d start being very careful,” he says, “about who else in this house already knows the truth you’ve spent five months trying to protect.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​