Chapter Thirty-Three
Damon
The threat, when it finally came, arrived from a direction none of them had anticipated.
Two weeks before Victor's sentencing, Anya arrived at Ashcombe just after dawn, her face carrying an urgency Damon had learned to take seriously without question.
"There's a man named Serge Dubois," she said, laying a file on the breakfast table before either Damon or Elena had finished their coffee.
"Former Concord associate, never named publicly, currently facing his own federal exposure now that Victor's started talking.
He's been in contact with a private security firm out of Geneva over the last week — the kind of firm that specializes in making problems disappear quietly, not the kind that specializes in legitimate protection work. "
"You think he's a threat to us," Damon said.
"I think Victor's cooperation has made a lot of people very nervous," Anya said.
"And I think Elena testifying at sentencing, combined with the fact that her own father's death is now part of the public record connecting Concord to a second family, makes her a loose end someone might want tidied up before this goes any further. "
Damon felt something cold and familiar settle into his chest — the same protective fury that had put him between Elena and a bullet at Ashcombe months earlier.
"Then she doesn't testify at sentencing," he said immediately. "Her statement's already on record. She doesn't need to appear in person."
"Damon." Elena's voice was calm, but firm. "If I don't appear, it looks like something scared me off. It undermines everything we've built toward. I'm not going to let some faceless Geneva security contractor dictate whether I show up to see this through to the end."
"Elena, if this Dubois—"
"I know the risk," Elena said. "I've known risk since the night someone broke into my apartment and photographed my corkboard. I'm not walking away from the last step because it's dangerous. We finish this the way we've finished everything else. Carefully. Together."
Anya, watching the exchange with the particular expression of someone who'd learned not to bet against Elena Voss, said simply, "Then we increase security. Full detail, both of you, starting now, through sentencing and beyond until we're certain Dubois isn't a genuine threat."
Damon looked at Elena — steady, unflinching, exactly the woman who had refused to look away from him through a pane of glass on her very first day — and understood, with the particular ache of loving someone this fiercely independent, that he would never successfully talk her out of finishing what she'd started.
"Full detail," he agreed, quietly, "and I'm not leaving your side until sentencing is over."