Page 125 of Terms of Exposure
"Do you? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you made a series of catastrophically selfish decisions and dragged Emma into the fallout."
Damien didn't look away. "You're right."
"I—" Jennifer stopped, her head tilting. "What?"
"You're right," he repeated. "Every word. I made selfish decisions. I lied to my board. I used Davidson as a scapegoat. I put Emma's career, her reputation, her company at risk because I was too afraid of losing her to think about the consequences." He set his coffee down, untouched. "I'm not here to defend any of that. I can't."
Jennifer studied him, recalculating.
"Then why are you here?"
"Because Emma trusts you," he said, steel creeping intohis voice. "And I need you to understand that I would burn my entire world to the ground before I let anything happen to her."
"Pretty words," she scoffed.
"They're not words." Fierce conviction hardened his expression. "I falsified the audit to protect her. I've spent weeks watching Nathan Bell circle her like a vulture, knowing that if I intervene too directly, I make things worse. I've had to sit in boardrooms and pretend I don't notice the way he looks at her, the way he talks to her, because she asked me to let her handle it." His hands curled into fists on his knees. "Do you have any idea how hard that's been? Trusting her to fight her own battles when every instinct I have is screaming at me to destroy him?"
Jennifer looked at me. I gave her a small nod.
This is him. The real him.
She turned back to Damien, reluctant respect forming beneath her scrutiny.
"Nathan suspects the audit discrepancies," she said. "Emma told me. What's your plan if he finds proof?"
"He won't."
"You sound confident."
"The original documents were destroyed. The only copies that exist are the ones Falkirk's board approved. There's no paper trail."
"There's always a paper trail."
"Not this time."
She fixed him with a glare before reaching into her desk, slamming a stack of papers onto the surface.
Elion's audit.
"You were saying?"
The color drained from Damien's face.
"I'm the head of strategy, Damien." Jennifer's voice was ice. "Did you really think I wouldn't keep copies of our own financials?"
Damien didn't move.
Didn't speak.
His gaze locked on the stack of papers—
a loaded gun.
Steady.
Aimed.
Waiting to fire.
