Chapter 2 - The Police Never Reached Him
Victor still said nothing when the bodyguards crossed the distance between the SUVs and the sedan.
Two positioned themselves near Tristan.
One stopped beside Damon, careful not to touch him.
That restraint made Damon even angrier.
“You knew,” Damon said, staring at his father through the rain.
Victor’s expression did not change.
“Get in the car.”
“Answer me.”
“Now.”
Damon would have refused if the parking lot had stayed empty. He might even have swung at the bodyguard nearest him.
But then red-and-blue light flashed at the mouth of the driveway.
Not one patrol car.
Three.
A fourth turned in behind them.
The police cruisers came fast and stopped hard near the entrance of the nightclub lot. Doors opened. Officers spilled out into the weather and moved toward the club doors with urgent purpose.
Damon looked back at Tristan.
Tristan wiped rain and blood from the corner of his mouth and said quietly, “That’s not for the club.”
One of the officers pointed toward Damon’s black sedan.
Two others moved that way immediately.
Victor finally began walking, not toward the police, but toward the lead SUV again.
“Damon.”
It was the tone that made Damon follow.
Not obedience.
Recognition.
Victor only used that voice when he already knew what was coming and had decided resistance was a waste of time.
Damon climbed into the lead SUV with Victor on one side of him and a bodyguard in the front passenger seat. Tristan was put into the second SUV with two other men. The convoy pulled away just as officers reached Damon’s sedan.
Through the rear window, Damon saw flashlights sweep over the cracked windshield and dented hood. He saw one officer try the driver’s-side door. Another bent near the rear passenger side, then called sharply to the others.
Something had been found.
By the time the SUVs hit the wet main road, Damon’s pulse had changed from rage to a harder, colder rhythm.
Victor still had not spoken.
Finally Damon snapped, “What did they find?”
Victor glanced once at him.
“A handgun under the front seat. Unregistered.”
Damon laughed in disbelief.
“I don’t carry.”
“I know.”
“Then how do you know it was there?”
Victor looked out at the rain-smeared city lights.
“Because that was the point of tonight.”
Damon turned toward him fully.
“And you just happened to arrive when Tristan told me that?”
Victor did not answer.
The silence was answer enough.
The SUVs did not go to the mansion. They drove instead to Victor’s private penthouse above an office tower downtown—his emergency location, the one he used when a problem required walls no one else could enter.
Fifteen minutes later Damon stood in the glass-walled sitting room, soaked clothes clinging to him, while Tristan faced him from across the space with a split lip and a bruise already rising near his jaw.
Victor removed his wet overcoat and handed it to a bodyguard.
Then, finally, he spoke.
“Your girlfriend called in a tip thirty-seven minutes ago.”
Damon stared.
“Who?”
Victor gave him a hard look.
“Sloane.”
The name struck Damon almost as hard as Tristan’s whisper had.
Sloane Mercer. The woman he had loved for almost two years. The woman he had nearly proposed to the week before. The woman Tristan had slept with.
Victor continued.
“She reported that you were carrying an illegal weapon, intended to assault Tristan, and had been threatening her for weeks.”
Damon barked out a short, furious laugh.
“That’s insane.”
“She also sent the police a video clip of you grabbing Tristan outside the club last month.”
Damon’s head jerked.
“What clip?”
Victor looked at one of the bodyguards, who placed a phone on the table and pressed play.
The footage was shaky but clear. Damon stood outside the club entrance weeks earlier, pulling Tristan back from a drunk argument and shoving him against a wall. No context. No audio from before it. No sign that Tristan had been trying to hit a valet.
What remained on camera was only Damon’s size, his temper, and Tristan’s stumble.
A setup.
A pattern.
Something crafted.
Damon turned to Tristan. “How long?”
Tristan did not play stupid.
“Three months.”
“Three months?” Damon stepped forward. “You sleep with her for three months, then tell me she’s setting me up when I’ve already got cops at my car?”
“I found out the rest tonight.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No,” Tristan said. “But it’s true.”
Victor watched both of them without blinking.
Damon swung toward his father.
“And you?”
Victor’s face stayed unreadable.
“I knew she was moving against you,” he said. “I did not know whether Tristan would warn you or help her.”
That stopped Damon for a beat.
“Moving against me for what?” he asked. “A gun charge? An assault? Sloane wanted more than that.”
Tristan gave a grim smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “She did.”
Victor’s gaze shifted to him.
“Say it.”
For the first time that night, Tristan lost his mocking edge.
“She thinks Damon helped cover up her sister’s death.”
The room went still.
Damon frowned.
“What sister?”
Tristan held his stare.
“Lena Hart.”
Damon did not know the name.
May you like
Victor’s jaw tightened almost invisibly.
And that was the first moment Damon understood the night in the parking lot had started years before he ever met Sloane.
