Chapter Sixteen
Damon
The trust records took three days to fully untangle, and every day added a new, disorienting piece to a puzzle Damon had never imagined he'd need to solve.
The trust in Marcus's name had been established two months after the fire — not by Damon, who'd had no knowledge of it, and not through any Castellan Group account, but through an offshore structure connected, once again, to the Concord network.
It had been funded modestly at first, then more substantially over the years, and its most recent activity showed a withdrawal six months earlier from a bank in Lisbon.
"Someone's been keeping him funded," Elena said, spreading the timeline across the safe apartment's kitchen table, "or someone's been using his identity to move money without him knowing at all. We don't have proof yet which one it is."
"There's one way to find out," Damon said. "I go to Lisbon."
"We go to Lisbon," Elena corrected, and he didn't argue, because he'd stopped, somewhere in the last several months, trying to keep her out of the danger that had already found both of them regardless.
That night, unable to sleep, Damon found himself telling her about Marcus properly for the first time — not the flat, factual account he'd given her in the safe apartment their first night together, but the real memory, the specific texture of a brother six years older who'd taught him to sail on the estate's small lake, who'd covered for him with their father more times than either of them could count, who'd been, in every way that mattered, the person Damon had modeled his own sense of protectiveness after.
"He used to say I took everything too seriously," Damon said, lying beside her in the dark, her head on his chest, his fingers moving slowly through her hair.
"He was the warm one. I was always — careful.
Controlled. Even before the fire." A pause.
"I used to think I became this version of myself because of what happened to them.
Elena, I'm starting to wonder if I was always going to become this person, and the fire just — accelerated it. "
"Maybe both things are true," Elena said softly. "Maybe grief doesn't create who we are. Maybe it just clears away everything we were pretending not to be."
Damon was quiet a long moment, and then, into the dark, he said something he hadn't said to anyone in a decade.
"I love you." The words came out unpracticed, almost startled, as if he'd surprised himself by finding them true.
"I didn't intend to. I built my entire life to make sure I never would again.
And somehow, in eleven weeks, you've undone ten years of very careful architecture, and I find I don't want to rebuild it. "
Elena lifted her head to look at him in the dark, and whatever she saw in his face made her voice go soft and unsteady when she answered. "I love you too. God help us both, because I have no idea what we're about to find in Lisbon, but I know I don't want to face it without you."