Chapter 3 - THE MAN DAMIAN TRUSTED MOST
Viktor Soren arrived just before sunset.
I had expected someone frightening.
Instead, he looked almost ordinary.
Mid-fifties.
Gray suit.
Silver watch.
Calm eyes.
He walked into Damian’s room carrying a folder beneath one arm.
Then he saw Lila.
His expression changed.
Only for half a second.
But I noticed.
So did Damian.
“Who is the child?”
Viktor asked it too quickly.
Damian leaned against the pillows.
“My new cardiologist.”
Viktor did not smile.
Dr. Kessler did.
Barely.
“This is Elena Mercer,” Damian continued. “She works here. The child is her daughter.”
Viktor looked at me.
“Elena.”
He knew my name.
That unsettled me.
I cleaned bedrooms and polished silver.
People like Viktor were not supposed to know I existed.
“You know her?” Damian asked.
“I know everyone who works in this house.”
“That’s why I pay you.”
Viktor set down the folder.
“I heard Harrow disappeared.”
“You heard quickly.”
“I run security alongside Anton.”
“No. Anton runs security.”
Viktor’s mouth tightened.
“Of course.”
Damian studied him.
“Where were you between two eleven and two twenty-six last night?”
Viktor did not blink.
“At my apartment.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“No camera?”
“My building has cameras.”
Anton spoke from the doorway.
“We’re checking.”
Viktor turned.
For the first time, annoyance showed.
“Am I being investigated?”
Damian’s answer was immediate.
“Everyone is being investigated.”
“Even me?”
“Especially you.”
The room went quiet.
Viktor laughed once.
“Twenty-three years.”
“What?”
“I’ve been beside you twenty-three years.”
Damian’s voice remained flat.
“And if you are innocent, you’ll survive twenty-three questions.”
Something dangerous passed between them.
Then Viktor looked at Lila again.
“She shouldn’t be here.”
I agreed.
Damian did not.
“She stays.”
“Why?”
“She notices details.”
Viktor’s eyes shifted toward the sealed medicine tray.
That was another mistake.
He knew where to look.
Damian noticed.
“You already know about the vial?”
“I was told there was a problem.”
“By who?”
“Anton.”
Anton shook his head.
“I told you only that Dr. Kessler had arrived.”
Viktor went still.
Very slightly.
Then he recovered.
“Someone downstairs mentioned it.”
Damian smiled.
Not kindly.
“I’m sure.”
Viktor left fifteen minutes later under the excuse of checking security.
Damian waited until the door closed.
Then he looked at Anton.
“Follow him.”
Anton nodded.
“No contact. No confrontation.”
“Yes, sir.”
Damian turned toward me.
“You should take Lila downstairs.”
Finally.
“Yes.”
“Not the servants’ quarters.”
I stopped.
“Why?”
“Because if Viktor knew about the vial before he entered this room, then someone downstairs is talking.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t know who is safe.”
My stomach tightened.
“I’ll take her home.”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
Most people probably changed their minds when he looked at them that way.
I had been afraid of him since my first day.
But fear did strange things when your child was involved.
Sometimes it disappeared.
“My daughter does not belong in the middle of whatever this is.”
Damian said nothing.
“She is four years old.”
“I know.”
“She came here because I couldn’t afford a babysitter.”
His expression changed.
“She is not evidence. She is not security. She is not yours.”
Damian was silent for several seconds.
Then he nodded.
“You’re right.”
I hadn’t expected that.
“I’ll have a driver take you somewhere secure.”
“I can get myself home.”
“You aren’t going home.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever replaced Kessler’s vial knew Lila noticed something.”
That silenced me.
Damian continued.
“If they know she was in this room, she is safer behind Grayhaven’s gates than in an apartment with one lock.”
I hated that he was probably right.
Anton arranged rooms in the west wing.
Not servant rooms.
Guest rooms.
I nearly refused.
Then Lila saw the bathtub.
Apparently, childhood morality ended where bubbles began.
That night, I sat beside her while she drew.
A stick figure with dark hair.
A tiny yellow person.
A giant black scribble.
“What’s that?” I signed.
She pointed toward the stick figure.
Heart man.
Damian.
She pointed at herself.
Then the black scribble.
Bad man.
My skin prickled.
“Who?”
Lila frowned.
She drew something beside the black figure.
A circle.
Then lines around it.
A watch.
Silver.
I thought of Viktor.
Silver watch.
But plenty of men wore watches.
“Did you see him before?”
Lila nodded.
“Where?”
She signed:
Daddy.
My breath stopped.
“What about Daddy?”
My husband, Daniel, had died almost two years earlier.
A car accident on Interstate 95.
Rain.
A guardrail.
Police said he lost control.
Lila had been barely two.
I signed again.
The man knew Daddy?
Lila shook her head impatiently.
She climbed off the bed.
Then opened my purse.
Inside my wallet was an old photograph.
Daniel holding Lila when she was a baby.
He wore jeans, a Navy sweatshirt, and the crooked smile that had made me fall in love with him.
Lila pointed to Daniel’s wrist.
A silver watch.
Not the same as Viktor’s.
But similar.
Then she pointed at a small tattoo near Daniel’s thumb.
Three thin lines crossing a circle.
I had always assumed it meant nothing.
Daniel said it came from “a stupid teenage phase.”
Lila drew the same shape.
Then she pointed toward Damian’s hallway.
My pulse quickened.
“Damian has that?”
She nodded.
I had never noticed.
Later, I carried Lila to the east wing.
Damian was awake.
“You again,” he murmured.
“I need to ask you something.”
He looked at my face.
“What happened?”
“Show me your right hand.”
His eyes hardened.
“Why?”
“Please.”
Slowly, he lifted it.
Near his thumb was an old faded tattoo.
Three lines.
One circle.
Exactly like Daniel’s.
I forgot how to breathe.
“Where did you get that?”
Damian looked at me.
“Why?”
I pulled out Daniel’s photograph.
The second Damian saw it, his face changed.
Not surprise.
Shock.
He reached for the picture.
His hand trembled.
“Where did you get this?”
“That was my husband.”
Damian stared.
“What was his name?”
“Daniel Mercer.”
“No.”
“What?”
His voice became rough.
“That was not the name he was born with.”
Cold moved through me.
“You knew him?”
Damian looked toward Lila.
For the first time since I met him, genuine fear appeared in his face.
“His mother was named Anya.”
My stomach dropped.
Daniel’s mother had died before I met him.
He rarely talked about her.
“How do you know that?”
Damian’s eyes filled with something I could not understand.
“Because Anya Volkov was my sister.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“She disappeared from this family twenty-seven years ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
“She had a son.”
Damian looked at the photograph again.
“My father spent years searching for them.”
“Daniel never mentioned you.”
“He wouldn’t have known.”
My legs weakened.
I sat down.
Damian whispered:
“Anya changed their names.”
He touched the tattoo in the photograph.
“But she taught him that symbol.”
“What does it mean?”
“Family.”
My eyes moved toward Lila.
Damian followed.
Something changed between us.
A truth neither of us was ready to name.
Then Anton burst into the room.
“Sir.”
Damian looked up.
“What?”
“Viktor’s apartment is empty.”
“Empty how?”
“Clothes gone. Safe cleaned out.”
Damian’s expression hardened.
Anton continued.
“But we found one thing.”
He placed an old envelope on Damian’s bed.
It was addressed to Viktor Soren.
The handwriting belonged to someone I recognized immediately.
Daniel.
My dead husband.
Damian opened it.
Inside was a single sheet.
The date was three weeks before Daniel’s fatal car accident.
Damian read aloud:
“Viktor, I know who my mother was. I know what you did to her. If you don’t tell Damian the truth, I will.”
My blood turned to ice.
Daniel’s death had happened twenty-one days later.
May you like
And suddenly the accident I had grieved for two years did not feel like an accident at all.
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