Chapter 5 - What Damien Stole From His Wife
Emergency lights flickered on.
Theo pulled Isabelle behind him.
Luca moved toward the sound.
A narrow panel had opened inside the vault.
Behind it was a hidden room.
Not an intruder.
An archive.
Dozens of boxes.
Gabriel had prepared for everything.
Inside they found original development notebooks in Isabelle’s handwriting.
Her algorithms.
Her designs.
Every idea Damien later claimed publicly as his own.
Isabelle sat on the floor.
She remembered those nights.
Damien sleeping while she worked.
Damien presenting while she stayed home.
Damien telling interviewers he had built Cole Meridian from nothing.
She had never cared about credit because she thought they were a team.
Now she understood how thoroughly he had erased her.
Luca crouched nearby.
“He didn't steal your talent.”
She looked at him.
“He stole the evidence.”
That distinction mattered.
By noon, Adrian’s attorneys filed emergency injunctions.
Cole Meridian accounts were frozen.
The merger stopped.
Damien was removed temporarily by the board pending investigation.
And Isabelle filed for divorce.
Not because of Vanessa.
Not even because of the slap.
Because she finally understood that betrayal had been built into the architecture of her marriage.
Damien called twenty-three times.
She answered the twenty-fourth.
“What?”
“You're destroying everything we built.”
“No. I'm discovering what I built.”
Silence.
“You think Luca loves you?”
“This isn't about Luca.”
“It always was.”
“No, Damien. That's the difference between us. You think everything belongs to a man.”
He breathed heavily.
“The baby is mine.”
Isabelle’s hand tightened around the phone.
“Our child is not leverage.”
“I have rights.”
“And you'll have whatever rights the law gives you. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“You can't keep my child from me.”
“I didn't say I would.”
That silenced him.
She would not become Damien to defeat Damien.
She would protect her child legally and honestly.
But she would not use a baby as punishment.
“I loved you,” Damien said.
She almost believed the grief in his voice.
“Maybe you did.”
“I still do.”
“No. You loved being needed.”
She ended the call.
That evening Vanessa arrived at Adrian’s townhouse under security.
She brought a second phone.
“I found this in Damien’s apartment.”
Isabelle stared.
“His apartment?”
“The one he told you was corporate housing.”
Another lie.
Vanessa placed the phone down.
“It has one contact.”
No name.
Only G.V.
Gabriel Voss.
Impossible.
Her father had been dead seven years.
Messages had been sent to the number recently.
Damien: SHE FOUND THE MERGER FILE.
Reply: THEN MOVE THE TIMELINE.
Damien: LUCA IS BACK.
Reply: KEEP HIM AWAY FROM THE VAULT.
Isabelle felt cold.
Someone had been using her father’s initials.
Someone knew about the vault.
Someone knew about Luca.
Adrian examined the number.
“I know this area code.”
“Where?”
He looked at Isabelle.
“Dad's old estate.”
The estate had been empty for years.
They drove there before midnight.
Security entered first.
No one.
Then Isabelle noticed light beneath the library door.
She walked toward it.
Luca caught her wrist gently.
“Stay behind me.”
“No.”
“Isabelle.”
“My father’s name brought me here.”
She opened the door.
A laptop sat on the desk.
Its screen was glowing.
A live camera feed showed them entering the room.
Someone had expected them.
Then a printer began operating.
One sheet emerged.
Adrian lifted it.
Five words.
ISABELLE, ASK ADRIAN ABOUT 2019.
She turned toward her eldest brother.
His face had gone completely pale.
“What happened in 2019?”
Adrian said nothing.
“Adrian?”
He looked toward Luca.
May you like
Then at Isabelle.
And before he could answer, the locked basement door behind them slowly opened from the other side.
