Chapter 3 Chapter 3
The answer cracked through the room.
Elena stared at him.
Damian closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the anger was gone. “I don't know.”
She swallowed. “So tell me something you do know.” Elena looked at the photographs scattered across the desk. “Was any of it real?”
His expression changed immediately. “Yes.”
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
“Because it is.”
“You researched me before meeting me, you arranged our first meeting, you wanted my trust, you used things I told you against my family..”
His face tightened.
“And then you married me.”
Damian took a step toward her.
She stepped back again.
He stopped. “I didn't plan us.”
Elena laughed bitterly. “What does that even mean?”
“I planned meeting you.” His voice lowered. “I planned on getting close enough to understand what Richard protected and who he trusted. I planned using whatever access you gave me.”
Each word landed harder than the last.
“But I didn't plan us.”
Elena stared at him.
“I didn't plan falling in love with you, I didn't plan asking you to marry me, I didn't marry you for access..”
“Stop.”
“Elena.”
“Stop.”
His eyes glistened.
Elena's voice came out barely above a whisper. "You used me.”
Damian looked at her. “At the beginning.”
She laughed. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Elena...”
“At the beginning like that makes it better.”
“No.”
“Then stop saying it like there's some part of this I'm supposed to understand.”
“I'm trying to tell you the truth.”
“The truth?” Her voice rose. “You don't get points for telling me the truth after I found it in a locked drawer.”
Damian's jaw tightened.
“I want my husband to tell me how he did this to me.”
Damian's face changed. “Elena.”
“How did you come home?”
He frowned.
“How did you walk through that door every night? My father would call because something else had gone wrong. My mother would ask me to come over because he wasn't sleeping. I'd sit downstairs telling you I was worried, and you'd hold me.” Her voice broke. "You held me.”
Damian looked away.
“No, look at me.”
He did.
“You'd tell me everything would be okay. You'd take my phone away when I kept checking for updates. You'd make me eat when I wasn't hungry.” Tears filled her eyes. “And then you'd go to work the next morning and do what?”
Damian said nothing.
“Find something else to take from them?”
“Elena, I never wanted you caught in this.”
“You married me, you made me part of both families and somehow thought I wasn't in the middle?”
“I thought I could keep you separate.”
Elena stared at him. “Separate?”
“I made sure nothing connected directly to you was touched.”
She blinked.
“Your studio was excluded from everything. Your personal assets, your accounts, your employees.”
For a moment Elena genuinely couldn't believe what she was hearing.
Damian continued. “Anything Harrington related that could have affected you personally was protected.”
“Protected?"
“Yes.”
A laugh escaped her. “Oh my God.”
“I wasn't going to let you lose everything because of something Richard did seventeen years ago.”
“You were destroying my family.”
“Richard is not you.”
“He is my father!”
“He destroyed mine!”
Silence crashed through the room.
Damian's chest rose sharply.
Elena stared at him. For the first time something other than guilt had broken through his composure, anger.
Damian looked away first. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. “I know that doesn't make what I did to you right.”
“Do you? Because you're standing there explaining how carefully you protected my bank accounts while you destroyed everything around me.”
“I thought...”
“You thought what?”
He stopped.
Elena waited.
Damian looked at her. “I thought I could have both.”
“What?”
“You.” His voice nearly broke on the word. “And justice for my father.”
Elena stared at him. “You thought you could destroy my father's company, expose him, take everything he'd built and then what?”
Damian said nothing.
“You'd come home to me?”
His eyes closed.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
She laughed through her tears. “You actually thought that?"
“I thought if you were protected...”
“Protected?”
“Elena.”
“You thought you could burn my home down and I'd simply move into yours.”
Damian went still.
Elena wiped a tear from her cheek. “When did you fall in love with me?”
His eyes returned to hers. “What?”
“When?”
“I don't know.”
“You have dates for everything else.”
“Elena.”
“You knew what time I left my studio. Where I bought coffee. Who my friends were. You knew where I went before I knew your name.” Her mouth trembled. “So when did I stop being Richard Harrington's daughter and become Elena?”
Damian stared at her. “I don't know.”
She nodded. “Right.”
“No.” He stepped forward. “Don't do that.”
She moved back.
Damian stopped. “I don't know because there wasn't one moment.” His jaw tightened. “I remember realizing I was looking forward to seeing you.”
Elena said nothing.
“I remember the first time you fell asleep beside me and I didn't move for almost an hour because your head was on my arm.”
“Stop.”
“I remember realizing there were things I wanted to tell you that had nothing to do with Richard.”
“Damian.”
“I remember understanding that if I never got another useful thing from you, I still wanted you there.”
“Stop.”
“I loved you before I admitted it to myself.”
“Then why didn't you stop?”
The question silenced him.
Elena stared at him. “If you loved me, why didn't you stop?”
Damian's lips parted but nothing came.
“When you realized you loved me, why didn't you stop?”
His eyes lowered.
“When you bought the ring?”
“Elena...”
“When you asked me to marry you?”
“Please.”
“When I walked down that aisle?”
His face crumpled.
“Why didn't you stop?”
“I couldn't.” Damian immediately shook his head. “That's not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He dragged a hand over his face. “My father died with everyone believing he was a thief, my mother spent years afraid to walk into rooms because she thought people were whispering about us. Everything Alexander built was taken apart and divided between people who helped destroy him.” His eyes reddened. "I watched my father spend the rest of his life trying to prove he wasn't a criminal.”
Elena swallowed.
“I spent seventeen years building something powerful enough that none of them could do to me what they did to him.” His voice hardened. “Richard kept his company. Martin kept his career. Gerald kept his money. Everyone who signed something, moved something, buried something went home and continued living while my father died with his name destroyed.” A tear slipped down Damian's cheek. “I wanted them to pay.”
Elena's heart betrayed her. The instinct to reach for him came so quickly it frightened her.
She stepped back instead.
“I wanted Richard to watch the empire he protected at my father's expense come apart.”
Elena looked at him.
“But I fell in love you.”
“No.”
“I do.”
“Stop telling me you love me like it's supposed to fix something!”
