Chapter 8: His Secret Vendetta

Chapter 8: His Secret Vendetta

The luxurious guest suite felt like a mausoleum. The silk sheets were cold, the opulent furniture stood like tombstones in the dim light. After Croft’s chilling departure, Damien had become a stranger again, retreating behind walls of ice she thought had been torn down for good. He stood at the window, a rigid silhouette against the moonlit grounds, his back to her, every line of his body radiating a tightly controlled violence. The fragile intimacy they had built was gone, replaced by the ghost of a name: Marcus Thorne.

“Damien.” Evie’s voice was soft in the crushing silence. She sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress barely dipping under her weight. “Talk to me. Please. Who was he?”

He didn’t turn. “Stay out of it, Evie.” His voice was flat, devoid of all emotion. It was more frightening than his anger.

“I can’t,” she insisted, standing and taking a hesitant step towards him. “Croft used that name to wound you. He knows. Which means it’s part of the mission now. It’s a variable I need to understand.” She was falling back on logic, on mission parameters, because the raw, personal fear of seeing him so broken was too much to bear.

“It has nothing to do with you,” he bit out, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.

“Everything you do has something to do with me now,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “We crossed that line. Or have you forgotten?”

He finally turned, and the look on his face stopped her cold. The raw vulnerability from the other night was gone, cauterized and scarred over. What remained was a bleak, desolate landscape of pure, unadulterated pain. His grey eyes were like frozen lakes.

“No, I haven’t forgotten,” he said, his voice a low, lethal rasp. “And that’s why you need to stay away from this. It will burn you. It will burn everything.” He turned back to the window, the conversation over. He had sealed himself in a tomb, and she didn’t have the key.

She retreated, a chill seeping into her bones that had nothing to do with the night air. Lying in bed, she watched his unmoving form for hours, a sentinel guarding a graveyard of secrets. She now understood that his recklessness wasn't a character flaw; it was a symptom of something deep and broken. His entire persona—the cynicism, the aggression, the lone-wolf act—was a carefully constructed shell around a hollowed-out core of grief. And she had fallen in love with the beautiful, tragic lie of the man, never guessing at the devastating truth of the ghost within.

The next morning, opportunity presented itself in the guise of country sport. Over a tense breakfast, Croft, radiating smug authority, announced a clay pigeon shoot on the east lawn.

“A little sport to sharpen the eye, gentlemen,” he declared, his gaze sweeping over the men at the table. It was a command, not an invitation.

Damien, who had been silent all morning, simply nodded, his face an unreadable mask. As the men prepared to leave, Evie saw her chance. Clutching her head with a convincing grimace, she turned to Croft’s ever-present assistant, Ms. Albright.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she murmured. “I have a dreadful migraine coming on. I think the country air is a bit much for me. I’d only be a distraction.”

Croft shot her a look of mild irritation, but waved a dismissive hand. “Of course, my dear. Rest. We’ll see you at lunch.”

As the men trooped out, shotguns in hand, leaving the great stone manor echoing and quiet, Evie’s heart began to hammer a frantic, determined rhythm. She gave Ms. Albright and the remaining house staff a wide berth, her mind racing. Croft’s study. The answer was in there. Yesterday, when Croft had dismissed them, she’d seen him tap a small, discreet security panel beside the heavy oak door. Her photographic memory had registered the motion, the placement of his fingers. 7-3-8-1. A birthday? An anniversary? It didn't matter. It was a key.

Her movements were silent, her nerves screaming with every step she took on the polished hardwood floors. The long gallery felt a mile long. She reached the study door, her breath held tight in her chest. She took a deep, steadying breath, her fingers hovering over the keypad. This is insane. This is a reckless move. The irony was not lost on her. She was channeling Damien.

She keyed in the code. 7-3-8-1. A soft, electronic click echoed in the silence. The handle turned. She slipped inside, closing the door gently behind her, her body flooded with a cold wave of adrenaline.

The room was the man. Dark wood, leather-bound books arranged with military precision, hunting trophies, and artifacts of conquest from around the globe. It was a shrine to power and ruthless acquisition. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for anything out of place. Her gaze landed on the massive mahogany desk. It was neat, organized, impersonal. Except for one thing. One of the deep filing drawers was fitted with a separate, old-fashioned brass lock, a stark contrast to the modern security of the rest of the house. It was a personal touch. A place for personal things.

Her heart pounded. She had no way to pick it. She looked around frantically. On the desk, a heavy, ornate letter opener shaped like a Roman dagger lay in its velvet sheath. A long shot. She wedged the tip into the keyhole, mimicking a technique she’d read about in a dozen forensic files. She applied pressure, twisting. For a moment, nothing. Then, a sharp crack. The cheap lock, meant more for privacy than genuine security, gave way.

Her hands trembled as she pulled the drawer open. It was filled with old ledgers and seemingly innocuous financial documents. But her instincts screamed that she was close. Her fingers brushed against a false bottom at the back of the drawer. Prying it up, she found a slim, leather-bound folio. Not a journal. Something older.

She opened it. Inside were photographs, letters, and newspaper clippings. And on top, a photograph that stole the air from her lungs.

It was a picture of two men in desert fatigues, squinting against a harsh sun. They were grinning, arms slung around each other’s shoulders in a gesture of easy, unbreakable camaraderie. One was a much younger Damien, his face free of cynicism, his grey eyes bright with life and purpose. The other was a handsome, charismatic man with kind eyes and the same confident posture—Marcus Thorne. He looked like an older brother, a mentor, a hero.

Beneath the photo was a yellowed newspaper clipping, dated eight years prior. The headline read: “DECORATED SPECIAL FORCES OPERATIVE KILLED IN FREAK TRAINING ACCIDENT.” The article detailed the tragic death of Captain Marcus Thorne during a live-fire exercise.

But it was the item tucked behind the clipping that made Evie’s blood run cold. It was a single sheet of paper, a carbon copy of an internal memo from a logistics company. “C-G Global Logistics,” she read, a name she recognized instantly as one of Croft’s oldest, most notorious shell corporations. The memo was a simple transport manifest. But scrawled in the margin, in Croft’s elegant, precise handwriting, were four chilling words.

“Asset retired. Loose end tied.”

It all crashed down on her with the force of a physical blow. The training accident. The shell company. Croft’s taunt last night: “I tried to warn him that crossing the wrong people has consequences.”

This wasn’t just a mission for Damien. It had never been just a mission. He hadn’t been assigned; he had hunted this assignment down. His entire career, his entire life for the past eight years, had been a single-minded, obsessive crusade to get into the same room as the man who had murdered his mentor, his brother-in-arms. The FBI thought they had their best deep-cover agent on the job. What they really had was a man on a suicide run, a guided missile of grief and vengeance aimed directly at Julian Croft.

She saw him with devastating clarity now. The arrogant agent, the reckless operative—it was all a facade, armor built around the broken boy in the photograph. The man she had kissed, the man she had surrendered to, wasn't just morally grey; he was a ghost, haunted and hollowed out by a loss so profound it had reshaped his entire soul. And he was willing to burn himself to the ground to avenge it.

With trembling hands, she photographed the memo with her burner phone, put everything back exactly as she had found it, and slipped out of the study, her heart a block of ice in her chest.

When she returned to their room, she stood by the window, looking out at the distant sound of gunshots from the clay pigeon shoot. Each shot sounded like a countdown. She wasn’t partnered with an agent anymore. She was in love with a time bomb. And she was the only one who could hear it ticking.