The Trillionaire Son-in-Law

Chapter 8: The Wife At The Door

The elevator doors opened, and Sophia stepped out into a corridor so quiet it felt like the rest of the world had been turned down to a whisper.

The carpet was deep and soft under her shoes, and the walls were a warm cream with low lighting. A young man in a dark uniform was waiting at the end of the hall, standing straight, and he led her, knocked twice, and then stepped back and disappeared like he had never been there.

The doors opened from the inside.

Damien stood in the entrance of the suite in a clean shirt and dark trousers, and he looked at her.

"Come in," he said.

Sophia walked past him and stopped in the middle of the room.

The suite was enormous. Floor-to-ceiling windows filled one entire wall, and beyond the glass, the whole city was spread out in the early evening light. Crystal glasses sat on a sideboard near a bar cart. A private butler stood at the far end of the room with his hands clasped, watching her.

She turned and looked at Damien.

"Who are you?" she asked, and her voice came out quiet.

Damien held her gaze for a moment, then turned to the butler. "Leave us, please."

The butler nodded and withdrew through a side door without a sound.

Damien moved to the small table near the window and pulled out a chair. "Sit down, Sophia."

"I don't want to sit down," she said, but she sat anyway.

He poured tea from a pot that was already on the table, set a cup in front of her, and settled into the chair across from her without any hurry.

"Marcus has gone to the police," Sophia said. "Did you know that?"

"I expected it," Damien said.

"Tyler is calling everyone we know and telling them you're a criminal." She wrapped her hands around the cup even though she wasn't drinking. "He's telling his friends and his business contacts”.

"That doesn't surprise me either," Damien said.

"My mother has already drafted divorce papers." She watched his face as she said it. "She had them drawn up yesterday morning."

Damien picked up his own cup and said nothing.

"I didn't come here to deliver messages from my family," Sophia said. "I came because I wanted to hear something true from you, even if it's only one thing. I am tired of being the last person in every room to understand what is actually happening."

Damien set his cup down carefully and looked at her across the table for a long moment before speaking.

"The necklace was real," he said. "Every financial move I've made has been legal. That is all I'm going to tell you right now."

Sophia stared at him. "That's all?"

"That's all," he said.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded envelope. She set it on the table between them without looking at it.

"My mother wants me to sign these," she said.

The divorce papers sat between them in silence.

Damien looked at the envelope, then back at her face, and he didn't move toward it and he didn't move away from it.

"That's your choice to make," he said simply.

Sophia left the papers on the table and stood up, and Damien stood at the same time. She picked up her bag and walked toward the door, and she was almost through it when she stopped.

She stood with her hand on the doorframe and her back still half-turned toward the room.

"Damien," she called.

"Yes."

She turned just enough to look at him over her shoulder. "The night you woke up in that hospital eight years ago. Do you actually remember what happened?"

The room went silent for a while.

She watched his jaw tighten.

"Yes," he answered.

Hearing this, Sophia's fingers pressed hard against the doorframe, and for a moment, she didn't move or speak. Then, she walked out without saying another word, and the door closed behind her with a soft sound.

She stepped inside the elevator, and the doors closed. She stood with her back against the mirrored wall and stared at the floor numbers descending.

He remembered.

He had always remembered.

She didn't know exactly what that meant yet, but she understood that the seven years her family had spent treating him like a burden, like a damaged thing they had been charitable enough to keep, had not been spent the way they imagined.

She understood that the quiet man who had scrubbed their floors and slept in their basement and never once raised his voice had been watching all of it with a full memory.

The elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened, and Sophia walked through the lobby. She pushed through the main entrance and stepped out onto the pavement.

The night air was cool and the street noise came at her all at once after the silence of the suite. She stood on the pavement and breathed it in and out.

Her phone rang.

She looked at the screen. Marcus.

She almost didn't answer, but she did anyway. She pressed the green button and lifted the phone to her ear.

"Sophia." His voice came through immediately. "I need you to listen to me very carefully."

"I'm listening," she said.

"The man upstairs in that hotel," Marcus said "I think I know who he actually is. And if I'm right, our entire family is in serious danger."

Sophia stood completely motionless on the pavement with the city moving around her and the light from the hotel lobby falling across her back.

"Sophia," Marcus called. "Are you there?"

"I'm here," she responded quietly.

But her eyes had drifted up toward the top of the building, gazing at the floor she had just come from.

And she wasn't sure anymore which one of them she was more afraid of.