Chapter 7 - THE REVELATION OF THE LEDGER
The rain had begun to taper off, leaving Harrow Falls shrouded in a thick, cold fog.
Two of Damian’s personal security guards had arrived, quietly removing Marcus’s unconscious body from the house and securing the broken doors. A portable generator had been set up in the yard, restoring a warm, yellow light to the kitchen.
Isabella sat at the kitchen table, a mug of hot tea untouched between her hands. Damian sat opposite her, his large frame looking absurdly out of place in the small, modest chair.
Eli had been sent to his bedroom upstairs, though Isabella knew her son was likely sitting with his ear pressed against the floorboards, listening to every word.
"You knew," Isabella said, her voice flat, devoid of the emotion that had nearly choked her earlier. "For nine years, you let me live here. You let me raise him alone. You let him think his father was a ghost."
"I didn't know, Isabella," Damian said, his eyes fixed on his hands, which were still stained with dried blood. "Briggs... Victor... they lied to me. They hid the second DNA test. They made me believe you had betrayed me with the Salazars."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the faded white envelope, placing it on the table between them.
"I found it two days ago," Damian said, his voice dropping to a low, rough whisper. "In Briggs's personal safety deposit box. The original laboratory report. It... it proves he’s mine, Isabella. It proved it nine years ago."
Isabella didn't touch the envelope. She stared at it as if it were a poisonous spider.
"I didn't need a piece of paper to tell me he was yours, Damian," she said, her voice rising with a sudden, sharp anger. "I knew the day he was born. I knew every time I looked at his face. I screamed it at you in that hospital room, and you walked out. You brought your lawyers and your divorce papers, and you walked away from your own son."
"I was a fool," Damian said, the words heavy and filled with a genuine, agonizing regret. "I was surrounded by enemies, Isabella. I had built a world where trust was a fatal mistake. Victor used my own paranoia against me. He wanted the empire for himself, and he knew that as long as I had you and the baby, I wouldn't be the monster he needed me to be."
"So you chose to be the monster," she said coldly.
"I did," Damian admitted. "And I have paid for that choice every single day of my life. The penthouse is empty, Isabella. The money is meaningless. Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw the face of the boy I refused to claim. I didn't have the courage to find you because I was afraid of what I would see in your eyes."
"And now?" Isabella asked. "Why are you here now? To take him? To turn him into another soldier for your family?"
"No," Damian said, his eyes snapping up to meet hers, burning with a fierce, absolute conviction. "Never. I came here to protect him. Victor’s men were coming for him because they wanted to use him to force my hand on the shipping docks. But Victor is done. The Salazar alliance is dead. I am liquidating my assets in Chicago, Isabella. I’m stepping down."
Isabella stared at him, trying to find the lie in his eyes. But all she found was the broken, exhausted man who had once been the boy she loved before the city took him.
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"You can't just walk away from that life, Damian," she said. "You know how it works. They don't let you leave."
"They will let me leave," Damian said, his jaw tightening into that familiar, stubborn line. "Because if they try to stop me, I will burn Chicago to the ground."
