Chapter 6
Everything else was noise until it became evidence.
Investigative reporter Vanessa Reed helped uncover a fourth.
The false authorization had been uploaded from a device assigned to Preston’s division.
A former employee named Elena Voss supplied the fifth.
Elena had once had an affair with Preston.
When Charlotte met her in a Milwaukee café, Elena arrived looking prepared to be hated.
“I knew he lived with you,” Elena said immediately. “He told me your relationship had already ended and you needed time to move out.”
Charlotte’s stomach tightened.
“How long?”
“Five months.”
“Why did it end?”
“Damon found out.”
Charlotte went still.
Elena continued.
“He threatened Preston’s job unless he ended it and told you the truth.”
Charlotte barely heard the rest.
Damon knew.
Fourteen months earlier, Damon’s internal security team had photographed Preston entering a hotel with Elena.
He had known.
And he had said nothing to Charlotte.
That evening, Damon came to her apartment because she invited him.
Charlotte waited until Vanessa and her attorney left.
Then she closed the door.
“You knew Preston was cheating.”
Damon did not insult her with confusion.
“Yes.”
“One year before I left him.”
“Yes.”
“You confronted him.”
“Yes.”
“You told him to confess.”
“Yes.”
“And when he didn’t?”
Damon’s silence answered first.
Charlotte stared at him.
“You saw me afterward. At dinners. Galas. You watched me stand beside him.”
“I believed he had told you.”
“Why?”
“He showed me proof the affair had ended. He claimed he had confessed and you chose to stay.”
“And you believed him?”
“I chose to.”
The honesty hurt more.
Charlotte walked to the window.
“Why?”
Damon could have given her a respectable answer.
Preston was his employee.
Charlotte’s private relationship wasn’t Damon’s territory.
Using surveillance gathered through his organization would have been invasive.
Instead, after a long silence, Damon said, “Because I wanted you.”
Charlotte turned.
His face remained composed, but his voice changed.
“I wanted you before that report ever crossed my desk. If I showed you photographs of Preston with another woman, I would have had to admit that part of me hoped you would leave him.”
“So you protected yourself.”
“Yes.”
“You let me live inside a lie because silence made your conscience cleaner.”
“Yes.”
Charlotte’s eyes burned.
For the first time since meeting Damon, his willingness to accept her anger did not feel noble.
It felt insufficient.
“Preston decided I wasn’t valuable enough to marry,” she said. “You decided I wasn’t entitled to the truth.”
Damon lowered his eyes.
“Different judgment,” Charlotte continued, “same authority.”
“I’m sorry.”
May you like
“I believe you.”
Hope moved briefly through his expression.
