CHAPTER 20

Damien's POV

The drive back was twenty minutes of silence and thinking.

Mei sat in the back with her bag on her lap looking out the window like someone taking in a city she had decided to assess rather than admire. Sophia sat beside me with the laptop against her chest and her eyes on the road and her mind somewhere I could see but not reach.

I let her have it.

At the fifteen-minute mark she said "Miss Chen."

I glanced at her.

"Linda Marsh," she said. "She's been in that house for eleven years. She would have been there when I arrived. When I left. Every dinner, every argument, every conversation I had with Marcus and Victoria in that house for three years." She paused. "She knew everything about me before I knew anything about myself."

"Yes," I said.

"Diana built a file on me," she said. "Before the marriage. Before any of this." She looked at the laptop in her hands. "She's had eyes on me for three years and I never knew."

"She didn't count on you ending up here," I said.

"No," Sophia said. "She counted on me staying exactly where I was."

Mei said from the back seat, "Your mother used to say the best thing about being underestimated is the look on their face when you stop being small."

Sophia looked at the window.

"I remember," she said quietly.

We pulled through the estate gates at three fifteen.

The main room had everyone in it. Dominic standing. Zane and Elijah at the table. Remy was on the couch looking like someone who had tried to sleep and given up. Carter was in the corner with the specific posture of a man who had spent the last two hours telling the truth and was still measuring the temperature of the room around him.

Dominic looked at Mei when we walked in.

"This is my aunt," Sophia said. "She stays."

Dominic looked at her for exactly one second. Mei looked back with the expression of a woman who had outlasted significantly more intimidating situations than a billionaire in his own living room.

"Of course," Dominic said.

Sophia put the laptop on the table.

"My mother built this over eight years," she said. "Everything. The Vale offshore accounts, the transfer records, and every communication. It's all here." She looked at the room. "But that's not the most important thing we found tonight."

She told them about Diana.

The security firm. Linda Marsh. Eleven years. The timeline that put Diana inside the Vale family long before anyone had thought to look.

The room got very quiet.

Dominic looked at Carter.

Carter looked back steadily. "I didn't know about Marsh. I knew about the firm. I didn't know she had placed someone."

"Can you prove that," Dominic said.

"No," Carter said. "You'll have to decide whether you believe me."

Dominic looked at him for a long moment.

Something passed between them that was fifteen years and a betrayal and something older than both of those things sitting underneath it.

"I believe you," Dominic said finally. It cost him something. Like he paid it anyway.

Carter exhaled slowly.

"The estate," Zane said from the table. Everyone looked at him. "Diana placed someone in the Vale household eleven years ago and maintained access for the duration. If she operates consistently." He paused. "She would have done the same here."

The room went still.

"Someone on staff," Remy said slowly.

"Or someone close enough to staff to have the same access," Zane said.

Everyone in the room did the same calculation at the same time. I could see it happening, the mental inventory of everyone who moved through this building, who had been here long enough, who had access to the right rooms and the right conversations.

Sophia was already looking at me.

I already had an answer forming.

"The household manager," I said. "Mrs. Park."

Dominic looked at me sharply.

"She's been here nine years," I said. "She has access to every room, every schedule, every conversation that happens in this building. She organises the security rotations." I paused. "She was the one who told me Sophia had left the estate the night of the Vale mansion visit. Before I had told anyone where we were going."

Silence.

"I didn't notice it then," I said. "I notice it now."

Dominic looked at Zane.

Zane was already on his laptop.

Forty seconds.

"Her employment background before us," Zane said. He turned the screen around. "Private household management for a family in Geneva. Before that." He paused. "A security consultancy based in Zurich."

Diana's city.

"She's here right now," Remy said. Not a question. Everyone who lived in this building knew Mrs. Park arrived at three AM to begin the morning preparation.

"Yes," Dominic said quietly.

"So Diana knows we're back," Sophia said. "She knows about the laptop. She probably knows about Mei." She looked at the room. "She knows everything we just said in this room."

Nobody argued with that.

"Then we stop talking," Dominic said, "and we start moving."

He looked at Elijah.

"The laptop goes to your office server right now," he said. "Encrypted and copied in three locations before dawn." He looked at Zane. "Mrs. Park doesn't leave this building until we know exactly what she's passed on and to whom." He looked at me. "And I need Diana's location. Tonight."

"I have it," Carter said quietly.

Everyone looked at him.

He reached into his jacket and put a piece of paper on the table. An address. Different from the Monaco one. A city address. Local.

"She didn't go back to Richard," Carter said. "I knew she wouldn't. When Diana feels the game turning she gets closer not further." He looked at Dominic. "She's been in the city the whole time. Two miles from here."

Dominic looked at the address.

Then he looked at Sophia.

"The evidence on that laptop," he said. "Is it enough?"

"It's everything," Sophia said simply.

Dominic nodded once.

Then his phone buzzed on the table.

He looked at it and something moved across his face that I had seen maybe twice in my entire life.

He turned the screen toward the room.

A text. Unknown number.

Five words.

Bring the girl. Come alone.

And below it is a photograph.

Mrs. Park. Standing beside Diana Black.

And between them, looking directly at the camera with an expression that said he had known this moment was coming and had decided to stop running from it.

Richard Black.

Our father.

Smiling.