Isabella POV
Henry Morrison's office occupied a corner of the Sterling Tower's fortieth floor, with windows that offered a panoramic view of the city's financial district. I'd been here countless times over the years, for birthday parties when I was young, board meetings as I got older, strategy sessions with my father when he'd been grooming me to take over the company.
Tonight, the familiar space felt different. Dangerous, somehow, as if the secrets Henry was about to reveal had already begun to poison the air.
He was waiting for me behind his massive oak desk, looking every one of his sixty-three years. The stress lines around his eyes seemed deeper than they had this morning, and his usually perfect silver hair was mussed as if he'd been running his hands through it.
"Thank you for coming," he said, gesturing to the chair across from his desk. "Can I get you anything? Coffee? Something stronger?"
"Something stronger," I said without hesitation. "I have a feeling I'm going to need it."
He poured two glasses of aged scotch from the bar cart beside his desk, the same Macallan 25 my father had always preferred. The irony wasn't lost on me. We were about to discuss secrets Dad had kept, using his favorite whiskey to fortify ourselves for the conversation.
"Before I tell you what I'm about to tell you," Henry said, settling back into his chair with his own glass, "I need you to understand that your father made me swear on your mother's grave that I would never reveal this unless it became absolutely necessary for your safety."
My safety. The words sent a chill down my spine.
"Is my safety at risk?" I asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer. Everything about Damien's behavior today had felt dangerous, predatory, like a man who'd stopped caring about collateral damage.
"I honestly don't know," Henry said. "But after seeing him today, after hearing about that meeting... Isabella, that boy isn't the same person who used to work for your father."
That boy. Everyone kept calling him that, as if the seven years that had transformed him into a corporate predator could be dismissed with childhood nicknames.
"Tell me," I said, taking a fortifying sip of scotch. "Whatever it is, I need to know."
Henry was quiet for a long moment, staring into his glass like it might contain the answers to questions he didn't want to ask.
"Damien Cross wasn't just your father's protégé," he said finally. "He was Richard's project. His... experiment, I suppose you could call it."
"What kind of experiment?"
"The kind that involved taking a brilliant, damaged young man and molding him into the perfect corporate weapon." Henry met my eyes directly. "Your father didn't just mentor Damien, Isabella. He created him."
The scotch turned to ash in my mouth. "What do you mean, created him?"
"Damien came to us from the foster care system when he was twenty-three. Brilliant mind, revolutionary ideas about technology and engineering, but completely rough around the edges. No family, no connections, no understanding of how to navigate corporate politics." Henry paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. "Your father saw potential in him. Not just professional potential, personal potential."
"I don't understand."
"Richard wanted to see if he could take someone with nothing and turn them into everything. Could he teach Damien to dress like old money, speak like old money, think like old money? Could he transform a foster kid into someone who could move in our circles without anyone knowing the difference?"
The implications of Henry's words hit me like a physical blow. "Dad was using him. As some kind of... social experiment."
"It was more complicated than that," Henry said, but his expression suggested it was exactly that simple. "Richard genuinely cared about Damien. But he also saw an opportunity to prove a theory he'd always had about nature versus nurture, about whether breeding and background really mattered in the business world."
I thought about the Damien I'd known seven years ago, polished but not quite smooth, brilliant but hungry in a way that suggested he'd known real want. I'd attributed his intensity to ambition, his occasional social awkwardness to the fact that he'd been focused on his work instead of society parties.
I'd never realized he'd been performing. That every smooth conversation, every perfectly chosen outfit, every moment of easy charm had been a carefully constructed facade my father had taught him to wear.
"The technology he was working on," I said slowly. "The revolutionary designs that supposedly made Sterling Industries so much money after he left..."
"Were his," Henry confirmed. "Completely, unquestionably his. But legally, they belonged to Sterling Industries. The contracts Richard had Damien sign when he first started working here were... comprehensive."
"Dad stole from him."
"Your father protected Sterling Industries' interests," Henry said carefully. "When Damien started getting ideas about branching out on his own, about using his technology to start his own company, Richard reminded him of his contractual obligations."
Getting ideas. Like wanting independence was some kind of character flaw instead of a natural progression for a brilliant young man who'd outgrown his mentor's shadow.
"There's more," Henry continued, and something in his tone made my blood run cold. "The reason Richard ended Damien's employment so abruptly wasn't just about the technology."
I set down my scotch glass with trembling hands. "What was it about?"
"It was about you."
The words hit me like a sledgehammer. "What about me?"
Henry looked like he was aging years with every word he spoke. "Richard found out about your relationship with Damien. About the feelings that had developed between you two."
"We weren't, " I started to protest, but Henry held up a hand.
"You were eighteen and infatuated with a brilliant, beautiful young man who paid attention to you. Damien was twenty-five and half in love with his mentor's daughter, the princess of the kingdom he'd been invited to join." Henry's voice was gentle but implacable. "Richard saw it coming long before either of you realized what was happening."
My father had known. Had seen the way Damien and I looked at each other, had watched us fall in love, and had done nothing to stop it until...
"Until when?" I asked, though I was dreading the answer.
"Until Damien came to him and asked for permission to court you properly. To ask you to marry him."
The world tilted sideways. Marriage. Damien had wanted to marry me. Had loved me enough to go to my father and ask for formal permission like some kind of Victorian gentleman.
"What did Dad say?"
"He said absolutely not. He reminded Damien that he was nobody, that he came from nothing, that he would never be good enough for a Sterling." Henry's voice was heavy with old regret. "He told Damien that the experiment was over, that it was time for him to remember his place."
"And then?"
"Then Damien said something that Richard never forgave him for. He said that you loved him, that it didn't matter what Richard thought, because you would choose him over the Sterling name and legacy." Henry met my eyes. "He said he would take you away from all of this if that's what it took to be with you."
The room was spinning around me. Damien had been willing to give up everything, the company, the technology, the life my father had built for him, just to be with me. And my father had destroyed him for it.
"Dad had him arrested," I said, the pieces finally clicking into place. "The lawsuit Marcus mentioned. Dad accused him of theft to discredit him."
"Industrial espionage," Henry confirmed. "Richard claimed Damien had been planning to steal proprietary technology and sell it to competitors. The charges were eventually dropped, but not before they'd destroyed Damien's reputation and made him unemployable at any major corporation."
"But the technology was his," I said numbly.
"That's not how the contracts read. And Richard made sure everyone in the industry knew about the allegations. By the time the charges were quietly dropped, Damien Cross was toxic. No one would touch him."
I stood up abruptly, needing to move, needing to do something with the rage and horror that was building inside me like pressure in a boiler.
"He loved me," I said, more to myself than to Henry. "He wanted to marry me, and Dad destroyed him for it."
"Your father was protecting you," Henry said, but his voice lacked conviction. "Damien was beneath your station, Isabella. Richard wanted better for you than a foster kid with a chip on his shoulder."
"Better than someone who loved me enough to risk everything?" I whirled to face him. "Better than someone brilliant and ambitious and completely devoted to me?"
"Better than someone who would take you away from Sterling Industries," Henry said quietly. "Away from your birthright, your legacy, your place in the world."
My place in the world. The world my father had built on stolen technology and destroyed lives. The world where money and breeding mattered more than love and loyalty.
"Does he know?" I asked. "Does Damien know that I never knew any of this? That I spent months waiting for him to contact me, to explain where he'd gone?"
Henry's expression was answer enough.
"He thinks I was part of it," I continued, the pieces falling into place with devastating clarity. "He thinks I knew what Dad was planning, that I chose the Sterling legacy over him."
"I don't know what he thinks," Henry said. "But Isabella, that young man who left here seven years ago... he's not the same person who walked into your boardroom today. Whatever Damien Cross has become, whatever he's built, it was forged in the fire of what happened here. And that makes him incredibly dangerous."
Dangerous. Yes, he was dangerous. But not in the way Henry meant.
Damien was dangerous because he was right. Because he'd been wronged in ways that justified his desire for revenge. Because everything I'd inherited, everything I'd been raised to protect, had been built partially on the foundation of his stolen work and destroyed dreams.
"I need to see him," I said suddenly. "I need to tell him the truth."
"Isabella, no." Henry stood as well, his expression alarmed. "That's exactly what you can't do. If he believes you were innocent, if he thinks you were as much a victim as he was..."
"Then maybe he'll stop trying to destroy Sterling Industries."
"Or maybe he'll try to take you away from it all over again," Henry said grimly. "And this time, he has the power to do it."
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it sent a thrill of something that felt suspiciously like anticipation through my veins.
What if he did? What if Damien Cross, with all his wealth and power and carefully controlled rage, decided he wanted me back? What if he offered me a way out of this suffocating legacy that had cost us both so much?
"I have to go," I said, heading for the door before I could say something I'd regret.
"Isabella, promise me you won't do anything rash," Henry called after me. "Promise me you won't try to see him alone."
I paused in the doorway, looking back at the man who'd helped my father destroy the only man I'd ever loved.
"I can't promise that," I said. "Because right now, Damien Cross is the only person who's been completely honest with me. The only person who hasn't spent seven years lying to my face about what really happened."
I left Henry sitting alone with his scotch and his guilt, and rode the elevator down to the lobby with my mind racing. Everything I'd believed about the past was a lie. Every assumption I'd made about Damien's disappearance, about his hatred, about my own innocence in the destruction of what we'd shared, all of it had been built on my father's carefully constructed deceptions.
Damien had wanted to marry me. Had loved me enough to sacrifice everything for the chance to be with me. And when my father had taken that chance away, when he'd destroyed Damien's life and reputation and future, Damien had thought I was part of it.
No wonder he hates me. No wonder he wants me to beg.
My phone buzzed with another text as I walked out into the cool night air:
"Sweet dreams, bella. Tomorrow I start taking everything away from you, piece by piece. Just like your father did to me."
I stared at the message, thinking about the boy who'd once promised to love me forever, who'd wanted to build a life with me away from the toxic world of corporate politics and family legacies.
That boy was gone, transformed into a man who had the power to destroy everything I'd ever known. The question was: did I want him to stop?
Or did I want him to finish what my father had started seven years ago, and finally set us both free?
Only one way to find out.
I typed back a single message before I could lose my nerve:
"Then you'd better make sure you don't miss."