Chapter 2 - The Floorboard Secret
The silence in my bedroom was suffocating. The only sound was the harsh, ragged gasping coming from Evan, whose face had turned a deep purple as Damian’s giant blond enforcer, Lev, kept him pinned against the wall with a single hand.
Damian Cross didn’t even look at them. He stood motionless beside my bed, staring down at the spot where the floorboards met the base of the wardrobe.
“Lev,” Damian said softly. His voice didn’t carry anger; it carried something far worse—absolute authority. “Bring him here.”
Lev slammed Evan onto his knees in front of the dresser. Evan was trembling so violently his teeth clicked together. “I didn’t do anything!” Evan wept, blood dripping from his nose onto his shirt. “I swear to God! I was just fixing the floor! It’s an old apartment! She fell, I swear she fell—”
“Shut your mouth,” Lev growled, placing a massive tactical boot onto Evan’s shoulder, forcing him down into the dust.
Damian crouched near my broken leg. His dark eyes flicked to mine for a fraction of a second, softening just enough for me to see a flicker of humanity before he turned his attention to the wooden floorboards. He pulled a silver combat knife from inside his coat, drove the blade into the seam between two oak planks, and levered upward with effortless strength.
The wood groaned and snapped open.
Inside the dark cavity beneath the floor lay a heavy, military-grade steel document box sealed with a mechanical cipher, alongside a small, leather-bound journal bearing my father’s initials: D.W.
My breath caught in my throat. “That’s... my father died nineteen years ago. How is his stuff under my apartment?”
Damian reached down and lifted the heavy steel box as if it weighed nothing. He ran his gloved thumb over the cipher dial, then turned his gaze slowly toward Evan.
“You didn’t rent this apartment for her because it was cheap, did you?” Damian whispered. “You were placed here.”
Evan’s eyes went wide with pure terror. “No—no! I loved her! I met her at the coffee shop!”
“You met her because Victor Sterling sent you,” Damian said coldly, standing up to his full height. “Victor spent two decades searching for Daniel Whitmore’s vault keys. When he realized Daniel had a surviving daughter, he sent a bottom-feeding mole like you to romance her, isolate her, and tear this place apart while she was at work.”
Everything inside me shattered. My entire two-year relationship—the promises, the shared meals, the subtle ways he had cut me off from my friends and family—had been a cold, calculated lie. He hadn’t loved me. He had been quartering a target.
“You broke her leg because she packed her suitcase,” Damian continued, his voice dropping into a register that made the room freeze. “Because you knew if she left, you failed your handler. And Victor Sterling doesn’t forgive failure.”
“Damian, please!” Evan sobbed, clutching at Lev’s boots. “I didn’t find the box! I was going to give it to Victor! I can give you Victor! Just don’t kill me!”
Damian didn’t even look down at him. He motioned to the two private paramedics standing near the doorway with a stretcher. “Get her into the medical van. Use target-grade morphine for the pain. If she feels a single bump on the way to the estate, I’ll have your licenses.”
The paramedics moved swiftly, gently lifting me onto the gurney. As they wheeled me toward the shattered front door, I looked back at Damian.
“What about him?” I whispered, pointing a trembling hand at Evan.
Damian picked up my father’s leather journal and slid it inside his jacket. Then he turned to Lev.
May you like
“Take him to the basement at Pier 4,” Damian commanded quietly. “Keep him alive until I decode this box. If he tries to speak, remove his teeth.”
Evan’s bloodcurdling screams followed me all the way down the stairwell into the cold night air.
