Chapter 30
Damien POV
The city blurred past my windows as I drove through red lights and broke every speed limit I’d ever pretended to respect. My lawyer answered on the second ring, his voice carrying that careful, measured tone he always used when he knew I was about to ask for something expensive.
“Kill the story,” I said before he could finish his greeting, my knuckles white against the steering wheel. “I don’t care what it costs p>
“Mr. Blackwood, perhaps we should discuss the most effective approach” Thompson started, but I cut him off.
“I said I don’t care.” I swerved around a taxi that had the audacity to follow traffic laws. “Buy the newspaper if you have to. Threaten legal action. Burn the building down for all I care. That story doesn’t run p>
“I’ll handle it.” The sound of papers rustling came through the phone. “But sir, if the information is already circulating beyond this one source”
“Then make sure it stays buried,” I told him, ending the call before he could raise any more objections that would only waste time I didn’t have.
Seven minutes to the preschool, maybe less if I ignored a few more traffic laws. Aria would already be there, waiting outside Noah’s classroom with her arms crossed and her mind probably racing through every worst-case scenario. She’d be terrified, and she had every right to be, because this was my fault. Everything was my fault. Noah was in danger because I was his father, because my world was built on quicksand and blood money, and now all of that threatened to swallow our son whole.
My phone rang again, the screen showing an unknown number that made something cold settle in my stomach. I answered it anyway, because I already knew who it would be.
“Damien Blackwood?” The voice was smooth, cultured, familiar in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Marcus.” I gripped the steering wheel hard enough that my fingers ached.
“Hello, little brother.” He sounded genuinely amused, like we were old friends catching up over coffee instead of estranged siblings circling each other like wolves. “I heard you’ve been having a difficult week p>
“What do you want?” I took a sharp turn that made my tires scream against the pavement.
“Nothing much, really.” His chuckle was low and intimate, the kind of sound that promised nothing good. “I just thought I’d call and congratulate you on your son. Noah, isn’t it? Cute kid. Has your eyes p>
Every muscle in my body went rigid, my foot pressing harder on the accelerator even though I was already going twenty over the limit. “Stay away from him p>
“Or what, exactly?” The amusement drained from Marcus’s voice, replaced by something cold. “You’ll do what? You couldn’t even keep him safe from a nosy reporter with a tip and a smartphone. How exactly are you planning to keep him safe from me p>
“If you touch him” The words came out choked with rage that had nowhere to go except into the death grip I had on the steering wheel.
“Relax, Damien. Breathe.” He laughed. “I’m not interested in the boy. Not yet, anyway. Right now, I’m much more interested in watching you squirm, watching your perfect little life fall apart piece by piece. It’s really quite entertaining p>
I pulled into the preschool parking lot, my eyes immediately finding Aria near the entrance, her posture tight with anxiety as she scanned every approaching car. “This is about Father,” I said, keeping my voice level even though my heart was hammering. “This is about what happened fifteen years ago p>
“Oh, it’s about so much more than that, little brother.” Marcus’s voice dropped to something almost tender, which was somehow worse than the anger. “But yes, Father’s sins are certainly part of it. His crimes. His cruelty. His absolute certainty that he could take anything he wanted and destroy anyone who got in his way p>
I put the car in park but didn’t get out, my hand frozen on the door handle as Marcus continued, his words painting pictures I’d spent years trying to forget.
“You remember that night, don’t you?” he asked, his voice taking on a dreamy quality that made my stomach turn. “I was fifteen. Brilliant, they all said. Intense. Everything Father wanted in an heir. And I fell in love with my tutor, this woman who was barely twenty herself but seemed so much older, so much wiser. To me, it was real, Damien. It was pure. It was everything that mattered in the entire world p>
“Marcus” I tried to interrupt, but he kept talking as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
“Then I found them together,” he said softly, and I could hear something breaking in his voice even after all these years. “Father and the woman I loved. In his bed. In our house. She was naked and he was— Do you know what that does to a fifteen-year-old boy, Damien? To have your first love and your father tangled together like that p>
I closed my eyes, remembering that night even though I’d been only twelve and had tried so hard to forget. I’d been hiding in the hallway when Marcus came home early, when he’d walked into Father’s room looking for something and found everything he’d ever trusted turned into a lie.
“The betrayal shattered me,” Marcus continued, his voice steady now in a way that was worse than the breaking. “He’d stolen the woman I loved, and when I confronted them, wild with hurt and rage, do you know what Father did? He didn’t apologize. He didn’t even pretend to feel guilty. He just looked at me like I was an insect and said, ’She was never yours, boy. You’re a child playing at love. This is what real men do.’ Then he beat me bloody p>
My throat was too tight to speak.
“He beat me until I couldn’t stand up, until I couldn’t see out of my left eye, until I thought maybe he’d actually kill me,” Marcus said, and now his voice was completely calm, which made it infinitely more terrifying. “And when I finally stopped fighting back, when I was lying there choking on my own blood, he leaned down and whispered that if I ever told anyone what I’d seen, he’d make sure the whole world knew that I was the one who’d been pursuing her. That I was sick. Twisted. That I’d destroy the family name with my perverted obsession with an older woman p>
“I know,” I managed to say, my voice hoarse. “I remember p>
“Do you?” The question was sharp. “Do you really? Because you were twelve and hiding in the hallway. You didn’t see what I saw. You didn’t feel what I felt. You didn’t have your father turn your first love into a weapon to destroy you with p>
Through the windshield, I could see Aria checking her phone, her face pale with worry. I needed to get out of the car, needed to go to her, but Marcus’s voice held me frozen.
“I poured gasoline through the east wing that night,” he said, almost conversationally, like he was describing a shopping trip. “Went through Father’s rooms, through every hallway where I’d ever trusted him, and I poured gasoline everywhere. Then I lit a match and watched it burn. I wanted to burn everything down, Damien. The house. The family. The lies. All of it p>
“The fire killed her,” I said quietly, remembering the news reports, the official story that had been crafted to hide the truth.
“The fire killed the woman I loved,” Marcus corrected, his voice finally showing some emotion again. “She was still in Father’s bed when the flames took her. And I got this.” The sound of fabric rustling came through the phone. “A scar across my cheek from a burning beam that fell on me when I tried to save her. A permanent mark of what Father called my betrayal p>
I’d seen that scar once, years later, in a photograph that someone had managed to take before Marcus disappeared completely from the family records.
“By dawn, Father had me exiled,” Marcus continued. “He forged documents to erase me from the family records entirely. Changed birth certificates. Paid off officials. Made me legally dead. ’You’re dead to us,’ he told me. ’You never existed. You were never my son.’ And then he sent me away with nothing but the clothes on my back and the scar on my face p>
“I didn’t know,” I said, even though it sounded pathetic. “I was twelve. They told me you’d gone abroad for school. I didn’t know about the documents, about him erasing you p>
“Ignorance doesn’t equal innocence, little brother.” Marcus’s voice turned hard as diamonds. “You became him anyway. You had every chance to be different, to be better, but you became Mr Blackwood. The moment you threw out your pregnant wife, the moment you told her to kill your child, the moment you rejected your own blood—you became everything Father was p>
The words hit like a punch because they were true. I had become my father in all the ways that mattered.
“I’m trying to fix it,” I said, the words inadequate even as they left my mouth. “I’m trying to be better p>
“Too late.” His laugh was bitter. “But I’ll enjoy watching you try, watching you fail, watching you lose everything just like Father made me lose everything. The difference is, I had to burn the world down to get my revenge. You’re doing it to yourself p>
“Marcus, please” I started, but the line went dead before I could finish.