Chapter 43 The Ghosts We Love

Chapter 43 The Ghosts We Love

SCARLETT POV

The city looked washed out, painted in pale gray light that matched the emptiness inside me. I’d spent the night walking, thinking, breaking until all I had left was the echo of Kade’s words:

He’s the reason your father is dead.

It kept looping in my head, over and over, until I couldn’t tell whether it was the truth or poison. But either way, I needed answers.

So when the clock hit 8 a.m., I was already standing outside Damien’s penthouse, soaked to the skin, shaking from more than just the cold.

I still had his key. That fact alone made my stomach twist.

I slid it into the lock and stepped inside.

The smell hit me first cologne and cedarwood, familiar and dizzying. His jacket hung on the back of the chair, like nothing had changed, like I hadn’t spent the night unravelling the fabric of the man who wore it.

“Scarlett?”

His voice came from the hallway. Deep. Rough. Sleep-heavy.

When he appeared, barefoot, shirtless, a towel slung over one shoulder, I almost forgot how to breathe. His tattoos caught the light inked symbols I used to trace with my fingers when I thought love could rewrite sin.

He froze when he saw me. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I smiled bitterly. “You keep saying that, but somehow, I always end up here.”

He studied me carefully, his eyes darkening. “What happened?”

“Don’t.” I raised my hand. “Don’t play innocent. I met someone last night.”

His jaw tightened. “Who?”

“Does the name Kade mean anything to you?”

The color drained from his face.

I took a step forward. “He’s alive, Damien. He found me. And you know what he told me?” My voice cracked but I forced the words out anyway. “He said you made a deal with my father’s enemies. That you helped them take him down.”

Silence. Heavy and unbearable.

Then Damien exhaled slowly, looking away. “You shouldn’t have gone to him.”

“That’s your answer?” I snapped. “Not no, not that’s a lie, just I shouldn’t have gone?”

He rubbed a hand over his face, pacing the room like a caged animal. “It’s not that simple.”

“It never is with you.” I folded my arms, trying to steady the tremor in my hands. “Then make it simple. Tell me the truth.”

He stopped walking. His eyes met mine, and for a moment, I saw something raw flicker there fear, maybe. Or regret.

“You want the truth?” he said quietly. “Fine.”

He sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees. “Your father was a good man once. But before he died, he made enemies with people who wanted him gone. I tried to protect him, Scarlett. I warned him not to take that last deal.”

“What deal?”

“The shipment through the Eastern ports. He thought he could outsmart them. He couldn’t.”

I frowned. “You knew about it? You were there?”

“I was ordered to be there,” Damien said, his voice hardening. “I was working for them back then. I didn’t have a choice.”

I took a step back. “You worked for the people who killed him?”

“I was trying to survive!” he shouted, standing now, towering over me. “You think I was proud of it? I didn’t pull the trigger, Scarlett. I tried to save him. But by the time I got to him, it was too late.”

Tears stung my eyes. “And you never told me?”

“What would have changed?” he asked softly. “You already hated your mother. You needed someone to hold on to, someone to believe in. I couldn’t destroy that.”

I shook my head, backing away from him. “You destroyed it anyway.”

He moved closer, voice low. “I didn’t come into your life to hurt you. I came because I owed him. Because before your father died, he made me promise to look after you.”

That made me freeze. “What?”

Damien’s gaze softened. “He trusted me with you, Scarlett. He said you were the only good thing he’d ever done. I didn’t plan to fall for you. It just happened.”

The words hit me like a storm.

I wanted to scream, to throw something, to break every piece of furniture in this perfect, lying apartment. But I couldn’t move. Because part of me still wanted to believe him.

He reached out, fingers brushing mine. “I didn’t kill him.”

I looked up at him through tears. “But you helped the people who did.”

His hand dropped.

Silence again this time thick enough to choke on.

“You should go,” he whispered.

I didn’t move. “Say you didn’t love me. Right now. Say it, and I’ll go.”

He closed his eyes, pain etched across his face. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did.”

The truth is that something broke inside me.

I turned toward the door. “Then I guess we’re both ghosts now.”

The elevator ride down felt endless. My reflection in the mirrored wall looked nothing like the girl I used to be. I’d come here for closure, for anger, for vengeance but all I’d found was a deeper wound.

Still, beneath the ache, there was something else growing. A dark, determined calm.

If Damien had once been part of the machine that destroyed my father, then maybe he wasn’t the only one who had to pay.

Maybe the people above him, the ones who gave the orders, were still out there.

And maybe I could finish what my father started.

That night, I sat on the floor of my apartment, surrounded by old boxes from my father’s study. Letters, contracts, photos, evidence he’d hidden before everything fell apart.

I sifted through them one by one, tracing the familiar loops of his handwriting. He’d been paranoid in his final months, writing in codes and symbols I couldn’t always decipher. But now, with what Damien had told me, some of it started to make sense.

A few names appeared again and again: Leighton Holdings, Blackridge Corporation, Damien Black.

I froze.

It wasn’t just guilt by association. My father had known Damien’s name long before I’d ever met him.

I grabbed one of the letters, reading it twice before I realized my hands were shaking.

> “If anything happens to me, follow the trail through Blackridge. The man I trusted most became the one I couldn’t trust at all.”

I sat there for a long time, the words burning in my vision.

Damien hadn’t just been involved, he'd been deeply involved. And whatever promises he’d made to my father, whatever guilt he carried, didn’t erase the fact that he’d been part of the rot from the start.

But then why had my father asked him to protect me?

It didn’t fit. None of it did.

Unless there was something my father never told me something that tied the three of us together in ways I didn’t want to imagine.

When the knock came at my door hours later, I already knew who it was.

I opened it without hesitation.

Damien stood there, eyes shadowed, shirt half-buttoned, rain in his hair.

“You shouldn’t have come,” I said, voice low.

“I had to.”

“For what? Another lie?”

He stepped closer. “To give you the rest of the truth.”

I hesitated, torn between slamming the door and letting him in. My body chose before my mind did.

He entered, closing the door behind him.

He looked around at the scattered papers, his gaze falling on the letter in my hand. “You found it.”

I nodded slowly. “You knew about this?”

“I wrote it.”

The world tilted. “What?”

Damien met my eyes. “Your father didn’t write that letter, Scarlett. I did. I left it for him to sign but he never got the chance. He died before he could.”

I stared at him, speechless.

“He was going to expose the entire network,” Damien continued quietly. “He wanted to go public. I told him it was suicide. He didn’t listen. So I gave him a way to disappear. He refused it.”

My throat went dry. “So you let him die.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t let him die. I tried to stop it. But when I got there, the deal had already gone south. The man who shot him wasn’t one of mine. It was someone higher up.”

“Who?” I demanded.

His eyes darkened. “Maria.”

My stomach dropped. “My mother?”

He nodded once. “She was working with them the whole time.”

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

My mother. The woman I’d hated for her selfishness, her cruelty but never once imagined as part of my father’s death.

“You’re lying,” I whispered.

“I wish I was.” His voice broke. “She made the call, Scarlett. She set the meeting. Your father trusted her to be his escape and she turned him in instead.”

Tears blurred my vision. The room spun, my pulse roaring in my ears.

All this time, I’d thought the worst thing she’d ever done was marry the man I loved. But this—this was beyond anything I could have imagined.

Damien reached for me, but I stepped back.

“Don’t touch me,” I said hoarsely. “Not now.”

He nodded, pain flickering across his face. “I just thought you deserved the truth.”

And then he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

I stood there for a long time, staring at the letter in my hand.

The truth had finally come but it didn’t feel like relief. It felt like falling off the edge of the world.

That night, I sat in the dark and whispered to myself:

“They killed my father and they think they got away with it.”

A slow, cold smile curved my lips.

“They were wrong.”