Chapter 5 The Avenger's Mask

London greeted our return with steady rain that matched my mood. After three days in Tuscany, where Damien had methodically inspected every aspect of the estate like an auditor rather than a husband, the gray city felt oppressively artificial. Two weeks had passed since our return, and the questions that had begun to form at the vineyard continued to gnaw at me.

Tonight, Damien was working late again—the third time this week. His text message had been characteristically brief: Business dinner. Don't wait up. No explanation, no timeframe. Just orders, as usual.

I paced the townhouse restlessly, feeling like an exotic bird in a gilded cage. The staff had been dismissed for the evening, leaving me alone with my thoughts and suspicions. Why had he reacted so strongly to my casual mention of the old wine scandal? Why was he so interested in that childhood photograph? What was the connection between Damien Blackwood and Rossi Estate that preceded our arrangement?

At eleven, I gave up waiting and changed into my nightgown. At midnight, I was still awake, staring at the ceiling. At one, I heard the front door open and close, followed by Damien's measured footsteps on the stairs.

I feigned sleep as he entered our bedroom, listening to the familiar routine: shoes placed precisely by the closet, cufflinks deposited in their tray, the soft rustle of his suit being hung. The bed dipped as he slid in beside me, careful to maintain the invisible boundary that divided our marriage bed.

By two, his breathing had deepened into sleep, while I remained wide awake. On impulse, I slipped from the bed and padded to his study. If answers existed, they would be there, in the one room of the house I'd been subtly discouraged from entering.

The door wasn't locked. Inside, moonlight filtered through the tall windows, illuminating a space that reflected Damien perfectly: meticulously organized, expensively furnished, devoid of personal touches. I moved to his desk, hesitating only briefly before opening the top drawer.

Nothing unusual—pens, paper clips, a stapler. The second drawer contained files, all business-related. The third was locked. I was about to give up when my eye caught a small silver key in the pencil tray.

Heart racing, I tried it in the locked drawer. It opened with a soft click, revealing a single manila folder labeled 1946. Inside was a collection of newspaper clippings, yellowed with age. The headlines jumped out at me:

WINE FRAUD SCANDAL ROCKS TUSCANY
SUICIDE OF LONDON FINANCIER LINKED TO COUNTERFEIT WINE INVESTMENTS
ROSSI ESTATE CLEARED OF WRONGDOING IN FAKE WINE CASE

My hands trembled as I spread the clippings across the desk. One featured a photograph of a man in his forties—handsome, with familiar ice-blue eyes. The caption read: Harold Blackwood, found dead in his London home after losing millions in fraudulent wine investment.

Harold Blackwood. Damien's father.

I sank into the desk chair, pieces falling into place. Damien's interest in my family, his knowledge of our wines, his reaction to the mention of the scandal—it wasn't business. It was personal.

A floorboard creaked behind me. I whirled around to find Damien standing in the doorway, his face half-shadowed, expression unreadable.

Find what you were looking for? His voice was deadly quiet.

I gestured to the scattered clippings. Were you ever going to tell me? That your father killed himself because of a fraud supposedly committed by my family?

It wasn't supposedly. His words were clipped. Your uncle Lorenzo sold my father counterfeit investment wine. Premium 1946 Rossi vintages that turned out to be cheap table wine in falsified bottles. My father invested everything he had. When the fraud was discovered, he lost everything.

That's impossible, I protested. Lorenzo wasn't even running the estate back then. My father was.

Your father was the face. Lorenzo was behind the operation. Damien stepped into the room, his movements controlled despite the obvious tension radiating from him. When my father realized he'd been ruined, he shot himself in his study. I was ten years old. I found him.

The horror of that image—young Damien discovering his father's body—struck me silent. When I could speak again, my voice was barely audible. And you married me for... what? Revenge?

Something flickered across his face. Initially? Yes.

Initially?

He didn't answer, moving instead to gaze out the window at the rain-slicked London street. It's late. We'll discuss this tomorrow.

No. I stood, anger replacing shock. We'll discuss it now. You used me. You manipulated me into this marriage as part of some twisted revenge plot against my family.

I offered you eight hundred thousand euros to save your precious vineyard, he countered. Hardly the action of someone bent on destruction.

Then what do you want? What's the endgame here?

He turned back to me, his face once more an impenetrable mask. Get some sleep, Elena. It's late.

Don't you dare dismiss me, I hissed. Not after this. I deserve to know why I'm really here.

For a moment, I thought he might actually answer. Then his phone rang—the special tone he used for important clients. He checked the screen. I have to take this. It's the Sheikh. Without another word, he left the study, closing the door behind him.

I stood among the scattered evidence of his deception, too stunned to cry, too angry to follow. Eventually, I gathered the clippings and returned them to the folder, replacing it exactly as I'd found it. Whatever game Damien was playing, I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing how deeply his betrayal cut.

But sleep was impossible now. As the first gray light of dawn crept through the windows, I made a decision. If Damien wouldn't give me answers, I would find them myself.

I waited until he left for work, then called Matteo in Italy. I need you to tell me everything about the counterfeit wine scandal from twenty years ago, I said without preamble. The one involving the 1946 vintage.

A long pause. Why are you asking about this now, piccola?

Please, Matteo. It's important.

His sigh carried across the miles. It was ugly business. Your father was devastated when the fraud was discovered. Some English investor lost millions and killed himself. The investigation cleared your father, but the estate's reputation took years to recover.

And Lorenzo? What was his role?

Another, longer pause. Your father protected him. Always. But among the workers... we knew. Lorenzo had gambling debts. He needed money quickly. The '46 bottles were worth a fortune...

So he sold fakes, I finished, feeling sick.

Si. But the English investor—he was the only one who bought large quantities. Almost like...

Like he was targeted, I supplied. Matteo, I need you to find out everything you can about Harold Blackwood and his connection to our estate. And don't tell anyone I asked.

After hanging up, I spent the day in a daze, mechanically attending a charity committee meeting, nodding at appropriate intervals while my mind spun with possibilities. By evening, I'd reached a decision. I needed to see for myself where this twisted story had begun.

I waited until Damien texted that he'd be working late again, then called a taxi. The address I'd found in the newspaper clippings led me to Highgate Cemetery—one of London's oldest and most atmospheric burial grounds. The rain had stopped, but fog clung to the ancient tombstones, creating a ghostly landscape as I made my way through the gates just before closing time.

For nearly an hour, I wandered the paths, searching for the Blackwood family plot. I was about to give up when I spotted a familiar figure in the distance—tall, straight-backed, unmistakable even through the mist. Damien.

I ducked behind a large monument, watching as he stopped before a simple headstone. From my hiding place, I couldn't read the inscription, but I knew it must be his father's grave. What I didn't expect was what happened next.

Damien knelt before the grave and placed a bottle on the damp earth—a wine bottle. Even from a distance, I recognized the distinctive label of Rossi Estate's 1946 vintage—the rarest, most valuable wine my family had ever produced. The bottle that had disappeared from our library.

I held my breath as Damien spoke to the headstone, his words lost in the fog but his posture conveying a deep, private grief. This wasn't the cold, controlled businessman I'd married. This was a son still mourning his father after twenty years.

Eventually, he stood and walked away, disappearing into the mist. I waited until I was certain he was gone before approaching the grave. The headstone was simple: Harold James Blackwood, 1953-1999. Beloved Father.

The bottle glinted in the fading light—a genuine 1946 Rossi Estate Riserva, one of perhaps a dozen still in existence. Where had Damien found it? How long had he been planning this? And what did it mean for our arrangement?

I made my way back to the townhouse, arriving before Damien. In the quiet of my room—not our room tonight, I couldn't bear it—I pulled out my journal and wrote the words that had been echoing in my mind since discovering those newspaper clippings:

I have become the wife of my enemy. A man who married me for revenge, who sees in me not Elena but the family he believes destroyed his own. Every kind word, every touch, every moment we've shared has been part of a plan conceived in grief and executed in cold calculation. What happens when his revenge is complete? What happens to me?

I closed the journal as headlights swept across my window, announcing Damien's return. Tonight, there would be no pretense of a shared bed, no careful maintenance of our marital charade. Tonight, we were what we truly were—strangers bound by contracts and secrets, each keeping to our separate corners of a house built on lies.

Tomorrow, I would confront him with what I knew. Tomorrow, I would demand the full truth. But tonight, I allowed myself to mourn what might have been, had we met under different circumstances—had our families' histories not entwined in tragedy, had our marriage been born of something other than revenge and desperation.

Because despite everything, despite the lies and manipulation, one truth was becoming painfully clear: somewhere between our contract signing and today, despite all my guards and all his walls, I had begun to care for Damien Blackwood. And that, more than anything, was what made his betrayal so devastating.