Chapter 11 - Damian #2
And it hits me like a brick because she is the one person in this building I cannot bear to misunderstand me. She’s the only one whose misinterpretation feels like a wound instead of a tactical inconvenience.
“It’s been—” I begin.
“Busy,” she finishes for me in the same flat tone.
My jaw tightens.
Harper isn’t one to be affected by shit like this. She shouldn’t care in the first place—after all, aren’t we married but only on paper? Then what do I make of this—
“You’ve company,” she says lightly, as if the words don’t matter. “Inessa seems… helpful.”
There it is.
She won’t voice the insecurity. She won’t accuse. She’ll just stand there, burning silently, pretending it’s fine.
How could she doubt everything we are? I hate that she thinks I could be tempted by someone like Inessa.
“I’m not interested in her,” I say, voice a little sharper than it should be.
Her expression sours even more.
“I didn’t say you were.”
But the words sit wrong, like a too-heavy weight placed on a delicate balance.
She turns away before I can respond, leaving the faintest scent of her perfume trailing behind her. The door closes softly, but the silence she leaves behind is anything but soft.
Inessa appears less than ten minutes later.
She slips inside with a soft knock, sensing the lingering crack in the air Harper left behind. Her eyes take a slow, sweeping inventory of the room before settling on my face.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she says, though she is fully aware she is.
“What do you need, Inessa?”
She smiles, not exactly flirty, but something along the line. “Just clarifying tomorrow’s agenda.”
She steps closer to the desk.
“You seem tense today,” she adds, tilting her head in faux concern.
“I’m not,” I lie without effort.
She watches me for a moment, then says, “If I may ask, Harper looked upset when she left. Everything all right?”
The question is wrapped in innocence, a blade wrapped in silk.
Cold trickles down my spine. She’s not just observing.
She’s probing, testing how tightly Harper and I are bound.
I suppress the urge to bare my teeth.
“Ms. Markova,” I say evenly, “my personal life is not part of your job description.”
Her eyes shine with triumph masked as apology.
“My mistake,” she says softly. “I only meant well. Two strong leaders working together… the dynamic can be complicated.”
Get out, I want to say.
Instead: “Is that all?”
She leaves with a quiet nod, but her satisfied little smile lingers in the space after she slips out the door.
Two days later, the first breach appears.
It’s nearly invisible. A needle-thin puncture in a secondary archive server, nothing that would set off obvious alarms, but enough to register on the deeper diagnostic logs I monitor personally.
A test breach skillfully executed. Someone is pressing against the walls to see which bricks crumble.
I track the packet traffic. It snakes through encrypted relay points with elegant precision, masking its true origin like a shadow slipping through mirrors.
But patterns always leave fingerprints—even well-hidden ones.
When I isolate the fragments, I realize the routing signature isn’t random or external.
It runs directly through Inessa’s access terminals.
Of course. Her arrival, her manipulation, sudden interest in my life—she’s not here to observe. I stare at the code until the screen’s glow begins to burn behind my eyes.
I could confront her and alert Mikhail. I should shut down her access entirely.
But none of those would give me the righteous confirmation I want.
I press the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth as another idea strikes me. I feed the compromised channels a breadcrumb. A false report suggesting Harper is investigating discrepancies in internal communications.
If Inessa is connected to Anton, or anyone else, she’ll pass it on.
If she isn’t, no harm done.
But when she stops by my office that afternoon, her behavior shifts with unnerving fluidity. She seems warmer, more attuned to the details of my day.
Her voice is softer, the laugh sultrier than ever. She leans in as if sharing confidences, whispering suggestions meant to sound helpful.
“Some of the staff are uncertain about Harper’s position,” she murmurs. “It may help if responsibilities are more clearly defined.”
I look at her. Aha.
I know exactly why this woman is here, the quiet mission woven into every word of hers.
She is here to separate us, to tear us down from the inside out while Anton laughs.
And she thinks she’s succeeding.
Little does she know that Harper is not my weakness; she’s what drives me. She’s my anchor. You come for her? I won’t bow down like a whining dog.
I’ll tear your throat out with my bare teeth.
The poison Inessa plants spreads with insidious speed. There are more whispered comments and strange looks now than there were when Harper and I got married abruptly. Staff glances at Harper with an uncertainty they never had before.
I know the question hanging on their tongues before they even whisper it to each other: Does she belong here?
Harper notices, of course. She feels shifts in a room the way most people sense temperature changes. She looks at me across the hallway, eyes narrowing in confusion at the people suddenly cautious around her.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that she blames me for it. She doesn’t know it yet, but her intuition is rarely ever wrong, and that I know too well.
She walks to the elevator, shoulders squared against the tension, chin raised out of pure defiance.
Inessa thinks she’s weaving a net around me, but this little spider doesn’t know how badly stuck she’ll be getting in her own trap.
You won’t know what hit you until it does.