Chapter Twenty-Five
Elena
Anya found her alone in the estate's small library two days later, going through old family photographs Damon had finally allowed himself to unbox, and sat down across from her with the particular gravity Elena had learned meant something serious was coming.
"There's been a development," Anya said. "Victor's legal team filed a motion this morning. They're claiming entrapment, illegal search, and — this is the part you need to hear directly — they're subpoenaing you as a witness for the defense."
Elena set down the photograph she'd been holding. "Me?"
"You gathered the initial evidence. They're going to argue you were working outside the scope of your original contract, that your findings were the result of an unauthorized investigation rather than the audit you were hired to perform, and that everything built on top of your work — including Ridley's testimony and the phone logbook — is legally compromised as a result. "
"That's absurd. I found financial irregularities exactly like I was hired to do."
"I know that. You know that. But Victor's team is good, Elena, and they're desperate, and desperate good lawyers can make absurd arguments sound almost reasonable to a jury.
" Anya's face had gone carefully neutral in the way it did when she was delivering news she knew would be difficult to hear.
"There's more. They've hired an investigator to look into your background.
Standard defense tactic — find something, anything, to make the jury doubt the witness's credibility. "
"There's nothing to find," Elena said, though something cold moved through her chest even as she said it. "I've never done anything—"
"Your grandmother's care facility," Anya said quietly.
"The payment plan. The fact that you took this contract specifically because you needed the money urgently.
They're going to argue you had financial motive to manufacture findings that would please Castellan Group's new CEO — that you fabricated or exaggerated evidence because Damon Castellan was, effectively, paying your grandmother's medical bills by extension. "
Elena felt the floor tilt slightly beneath her. "That's not what happened. I found the pattern before Damon and I ever—"
"I believe you," Anya said. "Everyone who actually knows you believes you. But a jury doesn't know you, Elena, and Victor's team is going to try very hard to make sure the story they hear is one where a desperate woman fabricated a conspiracy to please a billionaire she was falling for."
Elena sat with that for a long moment, the photograph of Damon as a boy — gap-toothed, grinning, sitting at his mother's feet — still in her lap, and felt something harden in her chest that hadn't been there before. Not fear, exactly. Something more like resolve.
"Then we make sure the evidence speaks for itself," she said finally.
"Every transaction, every document, every piece of the timeline — verified independently, cross-checked by someone with no connection to Castellan Group at all.
If Victor's team wants to attack my credibility, let them.
The math doesn't care whether they believe me. "
Anya studied her for a long moment, something like respect moving across her usually guarded face.
"You know he's going to want to protect you from this.
Damon. The moment he hears they're coming after your credibility, he's going to want to bury the story, buy the best lawyers in the country, do something loud and expensive to make it disappear. "
"I know," Elena said. "Which is exactly why I need you to help me make sure I don't let him."
Outside the library window, the winter light had gone thin and gold over Ashcombe's grounds, and somewhere in the main house, Damon Castellan sat with his brother, slowly rebuilding a life out of complicated grief — entirely unaware that the woman who had helped him find the truth was about to become the person Victor Kessler's defense team would try hardest to destroy.