Chapter 7
"Meline, please don't do this!" Damen choked out, crawling forward in the mud, his hands sinking into the sodden earth. "Punish me! Take everything! Strip me of every dollar, every patent, put me in prison—I don't care! Just let me bury our son with you!"
Meline looked down at him with a sorrow so deep it seemed older than time itself.
"He is already at rest, Damen," she said, nodding toward a small, fresh patch of earth beneath the shelter of the weeping willow.
Damen’s gaze followed hers.
There, nestled beneath the roots of the ancient tree, was a simple, flat bronze marker set flush into the grass.
*LEO LAWSON.*
*JUNE 12, 2024.*
*HE NEVER TOOK A BREATH, BUT HE WAS LOVED FOR EVERY SECOND.*
Damen stared at the marker. The absence of his own surname felt like a clean, surgical amputation.
*Leo Lawson.*
His son didn't belong to the Vance dynasty. The dynasty was dead. The bloodline had ended before it even began.
"Why didn't you let me know about the burial?" Damen asked, his voice breaking into a dry, breathless wheeze. "Why did you bring me here tonight?"
"Because you needed to see the finish line," Meline said, her hand resting gently on the head of her cane. "You needed to know that the empire you built on my back is gone, and so am I."
"Elena is arrested," Damen said quickly, desperately searching for anything that might offer a thread of connection, any proof that he was on her side. "Arthur brought the police. She’s being charged with aggravated assault and fetal homicide. She’s going to spend the rest of her life in prison, Meline! I will hire the best prosecutors in the country to ensure she never sees the light of day!"
Meline looked at him, and for the first time, a faint, bitter smile touched her pale lips.
"You think this ends with Elena?" she asked.
Damen paused, his breath catching in his throat. "What do you mean?"
"Elena is a shallow, narcissistic socialite who thought she could secure a billionaire husband," Meline said coldly. "She was an instrument, Damen. A stupid, reckless weapon. But she didn't orchestrate this alone."
"Her father?" Damen asked, remembering Julian Courtland’s strange stillness in the boardroom. "Julian was shorting the stock?"
"Julian was bankrupt eighteen months ago," Meline revealed, her voice slicing through the rain. "His venture fund was a hollow shell running on bridge loans and fraudulent offshore accounts. He didn't introduce Elena to you to secure your funding round, Damen. He introduced her to you to devour Vance Medical from the inside."
Damen slowly pushed himself up from the mud, standing on unsteady feet. The cold rain soaked through his shirt, plastering it to his chest. "How do you know this?"
"Because my father knew Julian Courtland forty years ago," Meline said. "My father knew Julian was a thief. That's why Jonathan Lawson put the patents in my name and wrote the ironclad termination clauses. My father warned me: *'A man who loves power will eventually surround himself with predators, Meline. Keep the keys in your pocket.'*"
She took a slow, painful step toward him, her eyes locking onto his with an intensity that pinned him to the spot.
"Three months ago, I hired a private forensic firm to look into Julian’s holdings. I found out he had taken out massive short positions against Vance Medical through shell entities in the Cayman Islands. But Julian didn't have the leverage to bring you down by himself. He needed someone inside the house. He needed Elena to distract you, to blind you, to keep you isolated while he manipulated your executive board."
Damen felt a sudden, icy knot twist in his stomach. "And you didn't tell me?"
"I tried to tell you!" Meline’s voice cracked, the first flash of raw, searing rage breaking through her composed mask. Her eyes blazed through the dark. "Six days ago, at that dining table, before she called! I had the entire dossier in my purse! I said, *'Damen, our appointment tomorrow isn't just about the baby. Dr. Harper wants to review the ultrasound, but we need to talk about the company.'* And what did you say to me, Damen?!"
Damen closed his eyes. The memory hit him like a physical blow.
*“Meline, we have the best doctors in New York. If there were a serious problem, they’d handle it.”*
*“Elena is helping secure the company’s next funding round. You should be grateful.”*
He had dismissed her. He had defended the woman who was plotting to ruin him while ignoring the woman who held the proof of his salvation.
"You traded your wife for a viper," Meline whispered, her voice dropping back into that dreadful, calm stillness. "And you traded your son for a weekend in the Hamptons."
"Meline... please," Damen choked out, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the crushed blue knitted hat, holding it up like a white flag. "I kept this. It was on the pillow. I haven't let go of it all day. I know I don't deserve your mercy. I know I deserve to rot in hell. But don't leave me with nothing. Tell me where you’re going. Let me protect you from Julian. Let me make amends!"
Meline looked at the blue hat in his mud-stained hand. For a split second, her chin trembled, a flicker of the girl he had fallen in love with fifteen years ago surfacing through the grief.
Then she turned her back on him.
May you like
"You can't protect me, Damen," she said, walking slowly toward a sleek black sedan waiting silently at the cemetery gate, its headlights cutting through the mist. "You couldn't even protect the child growing inside my body."
***
