Chapter 7- The Conservatory

My heart was doing that stupid drumbeat again. I kept telling myself not to go. But the video wouldn’t leave me. His face handing Sophie that envelope. The way she looked at him like she was waiting for permission.

The text blinked on my phone: Sophie. Meet me. Conservatory. Now.

I headed to the conservatory. I met Marcus by the servants’ door waiting, like he knew what was happening. He didn’t look surprised. He just said, “You shouldn’t be alone,” and slid beside me like he’d stepped out of the woodwork.

“I won’t be,” I said. I didn’t tell him I wanted Sophie to see my face. I wanted her to have to say the ugly things aloud. I wanted to watch the person who laughed with me and drank cocktails at brunch say why she’d run off with my fiancé.

The conservatory door was ajar and warm light spilled out like a sin.

“Sophie?” I called, my voice thin.

“Elena, you came.”

“You said you wanted to explain,” I said. My words sounded brittle to me.

She blinked. “I, uh, yes. I need to tell you…” She stopped, like she had rehearsed it and then lost the line.

Marcus lingered by the ferns like a guard. I felt him there like a second skin. Comforting and annoying all at once.

“Why did you do it?” I asked. The question had more tones than one. Angry, hurt, incredulous. “Why him? Why Lucas?”

Sophie’s mouth trembled. She swallowed. “It wasn’t his idea,” she said. “It wasn’t mine either. It was,” She looked over her shoulder like someone might be listening. “It was someone else.”

“Someone else?” My hands curled into fists. “Who else would do that? Who would stage my humiliation?”

“I thought it was Lucas’ friends. I thought he was trying to get away from debt. I thought it was a run. But when I met Damian at the restaurant…”

My breath stopped. Damian had been there?

“He gave me money,” Sophie said fast, too fast. “To keep my mouth shut.” She flinched and looked like she’d been slapped. “He gave me money after he and Lucas met. He said it was to help Lucas. He said it was hush money. I thought it was to save Lucas. I didn’t know.”

“You took money from him?” I felt like glass. “You took money from the man who married me at the altar.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “You don’t get to imagine. He came to me the week before the wedding. He said if I helped him make it look real, he’d pay Lucas’s debts off. He said he’d make sure no one looked at you like trash. He said he’d get us out. He made it seem like protection.”

I wanted to swing. I wanted to hold Sophie and ask why she’d smiled with Lucas in a taxi and lie and all of it. I wanted answers. I wanted any word that would let me breathe again.

“So he paid you,” I said. “He paid Lucas. He used us. He lied.”

Sophie’s hands trembled on the mug. “I didn’t know he’d be the one to step in at the altar.” She swallowed. “I didn’t want to ruin you.”

“You didn’t want to ruin me,” I repeated because the irony tasted like blood. “So you helped ruin me for money.”

“He said it was to stop Ethan. He said Ethan would destroy anyone tied to Lucas. He said he’d protect you. He promised me safety.”

Another name. Ethan. Damian had mentioned a rival earlier in a whisper; now Sophie said it aloud like a ghost. The picture was getting uglier.

“Why come to me now?” I asked. “Why not call me the morning after…”

Sophie’s laugh was a wet thing. “Would you have believed me?” she asked. “Would you have believed I’d sleep with your fiancé? No. You’d have thought it was betrayal. You wouldn’t have listened. No one would have.”

I wanted to hate her. Part of me did. But there was also the girl we’d once been, two friends who shared a bottle of wine and secrets.

“You could have told me the truth,” I said. “At least then…”

“Then you would have hated me,” she said. “And Lucas would have been gone and you’d have been left alone. That’s what they wanted.”

“Who wanted it?” I demanded.

She looked at me like the answer was a stone she couldn’t lift. “Isabella,” she whispered.

My blood went cold. Isabella. The matriarch. The woman who’d smiled in pearls like a blade. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” Sophie’s hands were shaking. “She called me. She said she wanted the scandal to look convincing. She said it would bring sympathy to your side. She said it would look like the family fixed the mess.”

“Why would Isabella want this?” I asked. “Why burn the family’s image?”

“Because a scandal can be controlled,” Sophie said. “Because it made Damian’s quick fix look noble. Because if the public buys a story of abandonment, they forget a lot of other things. She said things…about the company. About a leak. I didn’t understand. I’m sorry.”

The threads were coming together and they made no sense and all of them were ugly. If Isabella had a stake, if she’d engineered sympathy, it painted the family in a new light. It made me dizzy.

“You had to tell me now?” I asked, more gentle than I meant. “Why go to me at all?”

Sophie blinked. “Because I can’t sleep. Because I’m a coward and I feel like I smothered you. And because I saw you with him yesterday. And I can't…”

She didn’t finish. She looked at the glass and then at the door. The conservatory door opened like a quiet entrance, and there he was.

Damian.

He didn’t storm in. He looked at Sophie then his gaze slid to me, and in that instant there were a thousand things hidden under a sentence.

“Sophie,” he said. “I told you you should’ve gone to me.”

“Damian,” Sophie said, voice small. “You gave me money. You told me to help. You told me…”

“Stop,” he cut her off. His voice was soft but it snapped air. “This is not the place for this.”

“It is,” I said, because I couldn’t help it. “Tell me, please. Was any of this true? Did you plan this?”

Damian smiled. One of those smiles that said he had already expected the question and already solved the puzzle. “I helped arrange a safe exit for Lucas,” he said. “He had debts. He was in deeper than he let on. Keeping him away saved him and you from being dragged down.”

“You paid her to help,” I said.

“I paid for silence,” he corrected. “I paid to keep people quiet. It was damage control.”

“And staging my humiliation?” The betrayal in my voice cracked open like an egg. “Was that part of damage control?”

His eyes darkened. “It’s messy,” he said. “Yes. But it worked. You’re alive. More than that, you’re here.”

“For whose sake?” I demanded. “Ours? Yours?”

He stepped closer. When he stopped in front of me, I could see all the angles—his jaw, the way his shirt fit his shoulders, the faint line of scar at his eyebrow I’d memorized. He wasn’t yelling. He was doing something worse: he was being calm.

“You’re asking if I did it for me,” he said. “I did it to protect the Blackwell name. And part of it, yes, was for me.”

The air shifted. Sophie’s eyes brimmed. “So you used me?” she whispered.

“I used the situation,” Damian corrected. “But I did what I had to.”

I wanted to throw the mug at him. I wanted to throw a thousand things. Instead I found myself leaning into him because being near him was like walking into a storm and being warmed by the lightning.

“Why tell me now?” I asked, voice small.

“Because there are other players,” he said. “And because someone is watching. Isabella matters, yes. But she’s not the only one. You’re in a nest, Elena. We have to know who’s laying the eggs.”

Sophie swallowed. “Someone’s been sending me notes,” she said. “Threatening me. Saying don’t back out.”

There was a sound then: a car engine, low and sudden. We all turned. Outside, beyond the glass of the conservatory, a black car idled by the drive. The windows were tinted. For a second everything was still; even the plants seemed to hold their breath.

Marcus moved like a shadow and stepped to the door. He peered out and his face did something I’d never seen. He looked back at us.

“Someone’s watching,” he said.

Who was the watcher? Isabella? Ethan? Someone else?

My phone buzzed like a mosquito in my pocket. An unknown number flashed on the screen: We saw you meet her. Don’t dig. —Unknown

The message hit like a slap. I tasted blood.

“Sophie,” I said slowly. “Did Isabella whisper this to you? Did she threaten you?”

Sophie looked at the ground. “She said things that sounded like help,” she whispered. Then, almost as if she was falling, she leaned into me and we both started crying.

Damian watched us both and his face was unreadable. When he finally spoke his voice was low and poised. “You don’t have to face them alone,” he said to me.

I looked at him, at Sophie, at Marcus. My chest was a drum, my hands cold. The car idled outside. The message was a nail. The house was full of people who smiled like angels and moved like predators.

Who was watching? And how many of them were smiling at me right now like they were saving me?