The Sinclair building had once been the pride of lower Manhattan's media district. Ava remembered walking its halls as a teenager—wide-eyed, in awe of her father's world. Back then, the building had pulse. Energy. People who believed in stories more than profit margins. Now it looked like it had been preserved in grief. Empty. Quiet. Forgotten.
Dust covered the windows.
The gold-etched signage on the front door had faded.
And the key Damien had left with the receptionist came in a plain envelope—no note, no instructions. Just a time. A name. A door.
She pushed it open.
The inside smelled like paper and time. Dim light filtered through stained glass windows, and the air was heavy with silence, the kind that clung to walls long after the people had gone.
Damien was already there.
He stood in what had once been the production room, the place her father called "the heart." The control boards were still in place. The monitors. The old reels, now useless and faded.
He didn't look at her when she entered.
"You came," he said simply.
"I'm here," she replied.
It wasn't the same thing.
They sat across from each other at a long, scarred table—one she remembered from her childhood, when she'd curl up in the corner while her father worked. Damien placed an old tape recorder in the center. It wasn't plugged in. Just symbolic.
"You said you wanted answers," he said. "Some of them start here."
She narrowed her eyes. "You knew my father came here often near the end."
"I was here too."
Ava blinked.
"You were what?"
Damien's eyes stayed steady on hers. "This was where we met. Quietly. No press. No boardrooms. No witnesses."
"You're telling me," she said slowly, "that the man who destroyed his company… used to sit with him like a friend?"
"It wasn't that simple."
"Try me."
Damien leaned forward slightly. "He came to me first. Before the board turned on him. Before the banks got nervous. He knew he was losing grip on the company's future. He wanted to merge. Not sell. Merge."
Her breath caught. "You never mentioned that before."
"Because I said no."
"Of course you did."
Damien shook his head. "I didn't say no to punish him. I said no because it wasn't a clean deal. Your father—" He paused. "He was brilliant, Ava. But by then, he was desperate. He was covering things. Stretching assets. Making promises he couldn't keep. I tried to help him privately, to restructure quietly. But someone leaked the conversation. The media ran with it. The board panicked."
"You expect me to believe that you were his… confidant?"
"I expect nothing. I'm just telling you what no one else has."
She stood suddenly, pacing.
Her heels echoed through the space like gunshots.
"This changes nothing," she said. "You still benefited when everything burned. You still walked away with the pieces."
"Yes," Damien said softly. "But not because I planned it that way."
"Then why?" she snapped.
He looked at her, and his voice came lower.
"Because I was in love with his work. With the stories. The vision. And I knew the people circling around him were vultures. I tried to protect what I could."
"You destroyed him."
"I destroyed the illusion," he replied. "He was already drowning."
Ava turned away, her throat thick.
She hadn't cried in years.
She wouldn't now.
She focused on the dust. On the light slanting across the floor. On the wall where her father once hung a portrait of Ava and her mother at a school play.
"He never mentioned you," she whispered.
Damien stood now too. Quiet. Careful.
"He was protecting you."
"From what?"
"From seeing the parts of him that weren't perfect."
She turned sharply. "Don't speak like you knew him better than I did."
"I didn't," he said. "I just saw the version of him that you weren't supposed to."
"Convenient."
"No," Damien said. "Tragic."
The silence that followed was thick with years they couldn't get back.
Damien walked slowly toward the old shelves, running his fingers along the spines of forgotten portfolios. One was labeled in handwriting Ava hadn't seen since she was nineteen.
"Your father recorded our last conversation," Damien said. "He never released it. Never played it for anyone."
Ava swallowed. "You have it?"
"No."
He turned to her.
"But Amira does."
Ava's pulse stumbled.
"How?"
"Her father found it. Saved it. She's been sitting on it for weeks. Deciding whether it's part of her story… or yours."
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?"
"Because I wasn't sure if knowing the truth would help you. Or break you."
She stared at him, heart thudding.
"And what do you think now?"
He stepped closer, his voice quiet.
"I think you're stronger than your grief. But not stronger than your doubt."
She hated that it made sense.
She hated that he saw her so clearly.
She hated—most of all—that part of her wanted him to.
They left the building together, but not side by side.
Ava walked ahead, Damien behind, both of them swallowed by the fading light of a city that kept too many secrets.
When they reached the street, she turned to him one last time.
"Do you regret it?"
He didn't ask what she meant.
He just said, "Yes."
And then, for once, he didn't follow her.
He let her go.
And Ava didn't look back.
Not because she didn't want to.
Because if she did… she wasn't sure what choice she'd make next.