CHAPTER 17

Sophia's POV

I didn't sleep.

Not because of Diana or the email or Marcus or any of the things that should have been keeping me up. Those I could compartmentalise. I had spent three years in the Vale mansion learning to compartmentalise things that would have broken most people before breakfast.

I didn't sleep because of what Damien had said outside the gate.

Especially me.

Two words. Said quietly and completely and with the specific certainty of someone who didn't say things they didn't mean. I had been lying in the dark turning them over for two hours and they kept landing the same way every time.

Heavy. Warm. Terrifying.

I got up at one in the morning and went to the kitchen because that was what I did and I was done pretending otherwise.

The lights were already on.

Damien was sitting on the counter, not on a stool, actually on the counter, with his laptop open and a coffee that had clearly been there long enough to go cold and his hair doing the thing it did when he had been running his hands through it without noticing.

He looked up when I came in.

"You couldn't sleep either," I said.

"I don't sleep," he said. "I have told you this."

"You have told me this and I have chosen not to accept it as a fixed truth," I said. I went to the coffee machine and started a fresh pot because whatever was in his mug was not worth drinking anymore. "What are you working on?"

"The email Diana sent to Marcus," he said. "Specifically the line about evidence you're carrying without knowing it."

I turned around and leaned against the counter across from him. "And."

"And I've been going through everything Zane pulled on your parents," he said. "The trust documents, the accident report, the Vale financial connection. There's something in here that I keep almost finding and then losing."

"Show me," I said.

He turned the laptop toward me.

I crossed the kitchen and stood beside him and looked at the screen and for a moment I forgot about the email and Marcus and evidence and everything else because standing this close to him in a quiet kitchen at one in the morning felt like the most natural thing that had happened to me in years and that was the most frightening thought I'd had all week.

I focused on the screen.

The trust documents. My parents' names. The asset list. I had read all of this before but I read it again now because sometimes things looked different in the middle of the night when everything else was quiet.

I got to page four and stopped.

"This company," I said. "Listed as a trust asset. Chenworth Analytics."

"I saw it," Damien said. "Registered to your parents eighteen years ago. I couldn't find any trading history or active accounts."

"That's because it wasn't a trading company," I said slowly. Something was moving at the back of my mind, something old and almost reached. "My mother used to talk about a project. When I was little. She called it the chenworth thing, like it was an inside joke. I thought it was just a word she made up."

Damien was very still beside me.

"She combined your names," he said. "Chen and worth."

"Yes," I said. "But worth was my father's middle name not his surname." I looked at the screen. "Nobody outside the family would have known that."

"Which means Chenworth Analytics wasn't just a company," Damien said. "It was something personal enough that they hid the name in plain sight."

I straightened up and looked at the ceiling and thought about my mother and her sharp eyes and the way she used to say the safest place to hide something is somewhere only the right person would think to look.

"She left me something," I said. "Not just the trust. Something specific. Something she knew might need protecting." I looked at Damien. "Something worth killing for."

The kitchen was very quiet.

He was looking at me with those grey eyes that were doing the storm thing they did when he was feeling something he hadn't categorised yet.

"Sophia," he said.

"I know," I said. "I know what it means."

"It means whatever your parents found out about Victoria Vale is somewhere you can access it and Diana knows that and now Marcus knows that and…"

"And I have no idea where it is," I said. "But I think I know who does."

He waited.

"My mother had a sister," I said. "My aunt Mei. I haven't spoken to her since the funeral. She and my mother were close in the specific way of two people who kept each other's secrets." I paused. "She came to the funeral and she hugged me and she said your mother wanted you to have everything that belongs to you. I thought she meant the grief. The memories."

"You think she meant something literal," Damien said.

"I think my mother told Mei where it was," I said. "And I think Mei has been waiting for me to ask."

Damien closed the laptop.

"Call her," he said.

"It's one in the morning."

"Sophia."

"I know, I know." I picked up my phone and found the number I hadn't called in five years and pressed it before I could think too hard about what I was going to say.

It rang three times.

Then a voice I hadn't heard since I was nineteen standing at a graveside in the rain.

"Sophia." Not surprised. Not groggy. Wide awake like she had been expecting this call for five years and tonight was simply when it arrived.

"Aunt Mei," I said. My voice came out smaller than I intended.

"I've been watching the news," she said. "The Blacks. The Vales. All of it." A pause. "Your mother would have loved this by the way. She always said you'd burn something down eventually. She meant it as a compliment."

Something in my chest cracked open slightly.

"Mei," I said. "She left me something. Didn't she?"

A long pause.

"She left you everything," Mei said quietly. "I've had it for five years waiting for you to be safe enough to receive it." Another pause. "Are you safe Sophia?"

I looked at Damien sitting on my kitchen counter at one in the morning with cold coffee and a laptop full of evidence and grey eyes that hadn't looked away from my face since I picked up the phone.

"Yes," I said. "I think for the first time in a long time I actually am."

"Good," Mei said. "Then come and get it. Tomorrow. Bring someone you trust."

She hung up.

I lowered the phone and looked at it for a moment.

Then I looked at Damien.

"She has it," I said.

"I heard," he said.

"Tomorrow," I said.

"I'll drive," he said. Like it was already decided. Like of course he was coming, like the idea of not coming hadn't occurred to him as an option.

I looked at him sitting there.

This man who had handed me whiskey and called me pathetic and then spent ten days quietly dismantling every reason I had built for not trusting people. Who had stood in front of Marcus at a gala and on a rooftop in the cold and outside a gate at midnight. Who had kissed me in an enemy's study without apology and held my hand in a car and said especially me like it was simple.

"Damien," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"I need to say something and I need you to not be weird about it."

He raised an eyebrow. "I am never weird."

"You are sometimes weird," I said. "In the specific way of people who aren't used to being said nice things to."

"Sophia."

"I'm getting there." I put my phone down and looked at him properly. "When I walked into the Black estate ten days ago I had nothing. Not just no money and no home. I had no idea who I was outside of being Marcus's wife. I had spent three years shrinking myself to fit into a life that was never actually mine." I paused. "And then I ended up in this kitchen with a glass of whiskey and someone who told me the truth even when the truth was that I was being pathetic."

Something moved in his face.

"You weren't being pathetic," he said quietly.

"I know that now," I said. "You showed me that. Not by being soft about it. By being honest about it, which is different and harder and worth more." I held his gaze. "You didn't treat me like something to be fixed or used or managed. You treated me like someone who was capable of handling the truth and I hadn't had that in three years."

He was very still.

"I'm not saying this because of the kiss," I said. "Or the rooftop or any of the dramatic moments. I'm saying it because of the coffee you refilled without asking and the way you said I know before I finished sentences and the fact that you're sitting on my kitchen counter at one in the morning working through my dead parents' financial documents because it matters to you that I get what belongs to me."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Sophia," he said. His voice was different. Lower and less controlled and entirely real.

"I'm not finished," I said.

"Okay," he said. Almost a smile.

"I think I'm falling in love with you," I said. "And I know that's fast and I know the situation is insane and I know Dominic is going to have seventeen opinions about it. But I've spent three years saying things I didn't mean to keep the peace and I'm done with that. So." I took a breath. "There it is."

The kitchen hummed around us.

Damien looked at me for a long moment with those grey eyes that were doing something I had never seen them do before.

Then he got off the counter.

He crossed the kitchen in three steps and stopped in front of me and put both hands on my face the way he had on the rooftop and looked at me like I was something he had been trying to find the right word for and had finally found it.

"I'm not falling," he said quietly. "I already landed."

He kissed me.

Slow and warm and certain, his hands in my hair and mine against his chest feeling his heartbeat doing something fast and human underneath the hoodie, and the kitchen was quiet around us and the city was outside doing its indifferent thing and none of it mattered even slightly.

When we pulled back he pressed his forehead against mine and we stood like that for a moment in the one in the morning quiet.

"Dominic is going to be unbearable about this," I said softly.

"Dominic can survive it," he said.

"Remy is going to say I told you so."

"Remy has been saying it since day three," he said. "Nobody listened."

I laughed. The real kind, the one that came from somewhere below the chest, and I felt him smile against my hair and thought that this was it. This specific moment. One in the morning in a kitchen with cold coffee and a man who had said I already landed like it was the simplest truth he had ever told.

This was the thing worth protecting.

Then his phone buzzed on the counter behind me.

We both ignored it.

It buzzed again.

"Zane doesn't double text unless it's important," Damien said against my hair.

"I know," I said. Neither of us moved.

Third buzz.

He pulled back and picked it up and read it and his face did the thing where everything went very still very fast.

He showed me the screen.

Zane. Three messages.

Marcus just filed an emergency injunction.

He's claiming Sophia removed evidence from the Vale property when she left.

Damien. He has a witness. Someone who was in the estate tonight.

I stared at the screen.

Someone who was in the estate tonight.

Carter. Remy. Me. Damien. Dominic outside.

I looked at Damien.

He was already looking at me with the expression that said he had done the same calculation and reached the same answer.

There was only one person who had been in that estate tonight who Marcus Vale could have gotten to.

And we had let him get in the car with us.