Chapter 3 THE IRON MATRIARCH

(Damien's POV)

The family's library smelled of leather-bound betrayal.

I stood at the arched windows, watching rain slash against the glass like the knives my grandmother currently pressed to my throat without lifting a finger.

"Eight percent!" Eleanor's voice cut through the silence, each syllable precise as a dagger. "You let that little nobody walk away with eight percent of our tech division."

Behind me, the antique clock ticked louder than a bomb.

I didn't turn. Couldn't face those ice-blue eyes that saw every weakness. "Elena Davids found a loophole in the..." I tried to explain, but she cut me off.

"A Blackwood," she said, her voice cold, "does not get outmaneuvered by some ambulance-chasing lawyer." Her cane tapped against the Persian rug, once, twice before she circled into view.

At eighty-two, she moved with the lethal grace of the panther she'd had stuffed over the fireplace. "Especially not by the husband of a girl we allowed into this family."

The portrait of Grandfather Oliver watched from above the mantel, his oil-painted eyes forever frozen mid-glare. The man who'd died of a heart attack. Strange.

I flexed my bruised knuckles. "Serena's company is using the neural..."

"Patent." She finished, her laugh was drier than the martini in her hand. "That you let her steal?"

"It was hers!" The words tore out of me before I could stop them.

The temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.

Eleanor's manicured fingers tightened around her cane. "Nothing is hers. Not the patents. Not the shares. Not even the air in her lungs after what she's done." She leaned closer, her voice thick with venom. "You will fix this."

The double doors burst open before I could respond.

Victoria stormed in, her tablet screen glowing with today's financial headlines.

VAUGHN INNOVATIONS SECURES $2B IN FUNDING

"SERENA VAUGHN NAMED TECH'S NEW VISIONARY"

My sister's perfect facade cracked. "She just poached our entire Singapore team!"

Eleanor didn't blink. "Richard!" She bellowed, disdain evident in her voice.

My father, half-drunk and fully useless, looked up from his whiskey. "Hmm?"

"Your bastard children in Paris," Eleanor said pleasantly. "Do they still want those trust funds?"

My father palmed, looking helpless. "Mother, please..."

"Bring me the ledger." Eleanor demanded.

The room went still. Even the rain seemed to pause.

That damned ledger. Bound in human skin, if family rumors were true, it contained every Blackwood sin for three generations. The key to our empire. The weapon that had toppled governors.

Victoria inhaled sharply. "You can't seriously..."

"Can't?" Eleanor's smile showed her teeth. "I buried two husbands and a son who underestimated what I could do." She turned that smile on me. "Unless Damien has another solution?"

All eyes turned to me.

I stared at the headlines, at Serena's smiling face beside men who should've been mine. Investors, innovators, kings. The woman I'd married would've never...

A memory flashed before my eyes. Serena curled in our bed, sketching circuit diagrams on my chest. "Someday," she'd whispered, "I'll build something that changes everything."

And I'd laughed thinking it could never happen.

Fuck.

I reached for the decanter. "Give me three days."

Eleanor's cane blocked my path. "One day." She leaned in, her whisper like a noose tightening. "Or I'll remind New York what happens to little girls who steal from lions."

Later at the Blackwood's Penthouse, the safe hidden behind my Klimt painting yielded two things, one was a photo of Serena on our wedding day, back when her smiles were real and second was a key to Eleanor's private vault

I stared at both like they might bite me.

My phone buzzed with Natalia's fifteenth call today. I declined it, pulling up Serena's contact instead. My thumb hovered over the call button.

The elevator pinged. "Pathetic." Victoria strode in, her Gucci dress probably costing more than an average man's annual income. "Moping over some gold-digging..." she paused.

"Say it." I didn't look up. "I'm in the mood to hit something."

She tossed a file on the coffee table. "Then hit her."

The surveillance photos showed Serena leaving her office. Serena at some underground lab. Serena meeting with..."

Adrian Cole?!

My blood iced over. The Nobel winner who'd refused Blackwood's offer last year. Now cozy with my wife?!

Victoria's smirk was all teeth. "Grandmother was right. That bitch has been playing the long game."

I shook my head. "Don't you let her hear you call her grandmother. She told us to call her by her name, remember?"

Victoria shook her head. "An old woman who wants to remain young. I have a feeling she might live longer than we."

I ignored her, flipping to the next photo of Serena mid-laughter, her eyes bright, and alive in ways I hadn't seen in years, and something ugly twisted in my chest.

"Leave." I ordered Victoria.

Victoria scoffed. "You're not actually..."

"I said leave!" The decanter shattered against the wall behind her, spraying glass and Macallan 25.

For once, my sister listened.

I pulled up the security feed from my old townhouse, the one I owned, but which Serena had taken over after the divorce. it was useless anyway.

Except...

I zoomed in. The bedroom closet door stood ajar. Inside, something glinted like metal.

A safe.

Is she safe?

And suddenly, I knew where she'd hidden the proof that the patent was hers.