Chapter 6- The Drive

My hands were still shaking when I clicked play.

I’d told myself I would be brave. The screen glowed in the dark like a small accusing eye. The video was grainy at first like someone filmed from a car across the street but then it cut and the view sharpened.

There was Sophie. Her hair shoved up in a messy ponytail, a cigarette pinched between two fingers though she barely inhaled. She was at the entrance of a low-lit restaurant. Then a figure moved towards her, he was taller, shoulders broad, and for a second I thought it was Lucas. My heart leapt.

It wasn’t Lucas.

It was Damian.

He took her hand like they’d known each other forever. He spoke quietly, leaning in. Sophie nodded, then slipped him something small. An envelope the size of a hotel key. He slipped it inside his jacket. A quick hand gesture, then he walked away. Sophie watched him go like she was waiting for a cue and then fled into a taxi.

The tape jumped. Someone had spliced it. And now there was a street sign in the frame I recognized: the boutique hotel from Isabella’s guest list. Sophie was at its revolving door, meeting Lucas there. She walked toward him like they were lovers who’d rehearsed heartbreak.

The camera cut again. This frame dragged my breath out of me. Damian back at the restaurant, sliding the same envelope into his pocket, but the angle shifted and the light caught the inside of his hand. There, just for a second, was a ring that glinted like the Blackwell crest. He touched his face like he was blotting guilt away.

I let the laptop fall to my lap. A soundless laugh ripped through me. Sharp and feral. I hadn’t felt surprise like that in a long time. I hadn’t expected the man who’d pulled me into his arms to be the one caught on camera making plans with my best friend.

“How could he?” I whispered to the empty room. The sound came out thin. “How could they?”

My brain tried to arrange the image into something human. Maybe it was an explanation, maybe Damian had waved Sophie away, had been paying for Lucas’s silence out of pity. Maybe I was twisting the picture to fit the part I didn’t want to admit I played in any of this.

I felt hands at the small of my back. Damian. He didn’t knock. He shouldn’t have been in my room without permission, but he was there, leaning like a silhouette. He didn’t ask. He just said, “You watched.”

“Why?” I asked, louder than I meant.

His face was calm, too calm. “Because I wanted to make sure you’d be safe.”

“Safe?” The word was a knife. “You set me up.”

“No.” Damian’s hand tapped the table like he was composing himself. “I insured you.”

“It looks like you engineered everything,” I said. “You paid them.”

A tightness around Damian’s mouth. “Do you have proof?” He sounded composed, but his jaw worked.

“I have this.” I held the laptop up and the video cursor was still frozen on his profile as he handed Sophie the envelope.

He looked at the image like it was a problem to solve. Then he stood and came to me, slow, a predator and a savior wrapped together. “You don’t understand the whole web,” he said. “There are players you don’t see.”

“Then show me,” I said, because what else do you say to someone who’s been playing God with your life? “Show me the whole web.”

He hesitated. For a heartbeat I saw him as the man who’d held me that night, not the monster I wanted him to be. Then he crouched and took my hands in both of his. His palms were warm. “I will,” he promised. “But not now.”

“Not now?” I echoed. “You give commands at the altar but you can’t explain why you staged my ruin?”

His eyes softened like a trap closing. “I didn’t stage your ruin. I staged a diversion.”

“A diversion?” The word tasted ridiculous. “For what?”

“For danger you weren’t aware of,” he said. “For people who would have used you like a weapon.”

My legs went weak. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to laugh. “So you used Sophie and Lucas to protect me?”

“If you want to put it in those terms,” he said, touch light on my knuckles, “then yes.”

“You told me to marry you to save me,” I said. “But it feels like you took my life to protect yourself.”

“That is not fair.” His voice tightened. This time there was anger, not the fake composure. “Do you know what would have happened if Lucas had married you?”

“No.” I didn’t know. I wished I did. “Tell me.”

Damian looked away as if the truth tasted bad. “He would have been used. He had debts. People who liked his weakness. He would have dragged you into things, Elena.”

“So you ruined him,” I said flatly. “You ruined my wedding and gave me into your hands instead.”

“No.” He moved closer. “I brought you into a place where I could protect you from people who would hurt you.”

“People like who?” I asked, desperate now. My voice broke, and a little sob escaped before I could swallow it. “Who are you protecting me from, Damian?”

He steadied me with one hand under my chin. “You saw one angle,” he said. “This,” he tapped the laptop, “is a frame. Framing is part of war.”

“War?” The word echoed. I hated how small it made me feel. “For what?”

“For control,” he said simply. “For the company. For the family.”

“So now I’m collateral?”

“No.” He sounded pained. “Not collateral. A shield.”

“You make me sound like an object,” I snapped, anger flashing up like a flare. “You sold me to the idea of safety and then you…” I stopped because the words were too big and big words don’t fix the small dying pieces of trust.

He didn’t touch me then. He only watched me. “I swear to you,” he said, “I did it so you wouldn’t be in the crosshairs of people who’d hurt you. I would rather have taken a thousand knives than let you be used.”

“That’s not your choice to make,” I said.

“You’re right,” he admitted. “It isn’t. But the choice was made.”

We both sat in the silence after that. My phone buzzed again and this time the screen lit with a different feed: an anonymous email with an attachment labeled “play_me_now.”

Damian reached out, fingers trembling for once, and shut my laptop. He didn’t look at the screen. “Not yet,” he said.

“If you truly cared for me you would let me see the whole thing.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. “To protect you from what you can’t unsee.”

“Or to protect yourself from what you’ve done.”

He looked at me like someone looking at a wound. “Elena, do you think I enjoy this? Do you think I liked taking a life like that? No. But I won’t apologize for doing what I thought necessary.”

“I don’t want your excuses.” I felt rage rise that tasted like a wild thing. “I want the truth.”

“Then get it,” he said. His voice was sharp now. “If you want the truth, you’ll dig. But remember, digging sometimes hurts more than the wound.”

I had a hundred questions. Did he love me? Was any of this personal? Or had I been a pawn in a man’s game of possession from the beginning?

Before I could speak, the phone chimed again. A new message, from an unknown number: He’s not the only one who moves pieces. Watch the older woman. —Unknown

I felt the air leave me in a tight, cold rush. Isabella’s smooth voice from breakfast came back to me. “Sometimes people choose their ruin.” The email, the video, the whispers, they were not simple. The house was layered with hands and motives.

Damian’s eyes were a steel trap. “You saw one side,” he said. “There are more.”

“Who else is involved?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached out and took my hand again, not possessive this time, but like someone clinging to a promise. “We’ll find out,” he said. “Together.”

I looked at him, at the promise on his face, and I felt a twist of fear and something else that made my palms ache.

Who had the power to make matches in this house? And how many of them were smiling at me, pretending to save me?