Chapter 2 - The Rival Who Arrived Carrying an Old Family Name

By the time Damon returned to the ballroom, the broken champagne tower had become entertainment instead of alarm. Staff swept glass from the marble while guests laughed too loudly, relieved that the sharp sound had not meant something worse.

Victor Soren stood near the orchestra in a midnight-blue tuxedo, smiling as though the room belonged to him.

He was fifty-eight, silver-haired, elegant, and dangerous in the way only patient men could be dangerous. He did not raise his voice. He arranged circumstances until someone else did the ugly work.

"Damon," Victor said, opening his arms. "Forty years. You don't look a day over miserable."

"You weren't invited."

"Neither was age. Yet here we both are."

Silas remained half a step behind Damon.

Damon watched the service doors instead of Victor.

Elena had vanished.

"You have something for me?" Damon asked.

Victor's smile thinned. "Always so transactional. Your father hated that about you."

"My father hated anything he couldn't control."

"And your mother?"

The question landed harder.

Damon gave nothing away.

Victor took a champagne flute from a passing tray without drinking it. "I heard the east wing is being renovated. Strange place to spend money. So many memories in those walls."

"Get to your point."

"I came to give you a birthday gift."

He slipped a small envelope into Damon's hand.

Inside was an old photograph.

Damon knew the woman immediately: his mother, Cecilia Kessler, standing on a Boston pier in a wool coat, younger than Damon remembered her. Beside her was another woman with the same dark eyes as Elena.

On the back, in his mother's handwriting, were five words.

If anything happens, trust Sofia.

Damon looked up.

Victor was watching him carefully.

"Where did you get this?"

"A man sells many things when he believes the past has become worthless."

"Name him."

"That would ruin the gift."

Damon stepped closer. "You came into my house carrying my dead mother's handwriting and expect to leave with mysteries?"

Victor's expression remained calm. "I came because someone else has started asking questions about Cecilia. Questions about the night she died. I thought you should know before those questions become accusations."

Damon's pulse slowed rather than quickened. Fear made some men faster. It made him precise.

Officially, Cecilia Kessler had died in a car accident when Damon was nineteen. Her driver lost control during heavy rain on a coastal road. Damon had spent years believing the tragedy was random, then several more suspecting his father had known more than he admitted.

But his father had taken his secrets to the grave.

"Who is asking?"

Victor looked past Damon toward the service hall.

"A woman who sings when she thinks she's alone."

Silas swore under his breath.

Damon seized Victor's lapel.

Nearby laughter dimmed as guests noticed.

"If you touch her—"

Victor's smile disappeared.

"Interesting choice of words. You met her ten minutes ago."

Damon released him.

Victor smoothed his jacket. "Ask Elena why she took a job here under her mother's maiden name. Ask why Sofia Marlowe died owing money to men she hated. And ask why Elena has spent six months trying to access a room in your east wing that your father ordered sealed after Cecilia's funeral."

Damon turned to Silas.

"Find her. Quietly."

Silas nodded and disappeared.

Victor finally sipped his champagne. "Be careful, Damon. People who inherit power often mistake possession for knowledge. You own this estate. You do not know what happened inside it."

"And you do?"

"Enough to regret surviving it."

That was the first thing Victor said all night that sounded genuine.

Damon examined the photograph again. The two women were standing beside a boat named Belladonna. Cecilia's hand rested on Sofia's shoulder. Behind them, partly cropped, a younger Victor Soren could be seen near the loading crane.

A fourth person stood farther back.

Damon's father.

Watching all three of them.

Silas returned less than five minutes later, jaw tight.

"She's gone."

"From the house?"

"From the property. Security says she clocked out through the kitchen entrance seven minutes ago."

Damon looked toward the guest doors.

"Find out where she lives."

"Already did. East Boston. Apartment over a laundromat."

Victor laughed softly.

Damon faced him. "What?"

"You think she's going home."

"You know otherwise?"

Victor placed his untouched glass on a tray.

"If Elena found what she came for tonight, she won't go home. She'll go to Pier Nineteen."

The pier from the photograph.

Damon was already moving.

"Why?" Silas asked, following.

Victor called after them.

"Because Sofia Marlowe left something there for Cecilia's son."

Damon stopped at the ballroom doors.

"Twenty years ago?"

Victor's face hardened.

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"No. Three days ago."

As Damon crossed the foyer, he noticed one more detail in the photograph: Sofia was not looking at the camera. She was looking past Cecilia, directly toward Arthur, with the wary expression of someone who had already decided where the danger stood.