Free Web NovelChapter 264: Chapter 264: What Raphael Found
Damian’s POV
They got back at seven in the evening.
The estate was lit up....warm light through every ground floor window, the feeling of a large house that had been occupied and tended all day by people who knew what they were doing.
Silas was at the door before they got there.
He looked at Eve.
She nodded once.
"Good," Silas said. He stepped back to let them in. "Raphael called."
Everyone stopped.
"When," Damian said.
"An hour ago," Silas said. "He sent a distress message just incase he doesn’t makt it out because something happened inside the Court." He looked at Damian. "But he’s out now. He’s safe. And he has what you asked for."
Damian breathed in one controlled breath.
"Where is he?" Eve asked.
"Two hours from here," Silas said. "He’s driving. He’ll be here by nine."
***
Damon had food on the table minutes later, not a formal meal. Just bread, che ese and cold meat.
Eve sat down and ate without ceremony.
Damian sat beside her.
Vessa at the end....she’d been quiet since they got back.
Damon sat across from Eve.
Looked at her face.
"Do you have something you want to share with me?," he asked.
She nodded instead of replying.
"Then tell me" he said.
***
Damien listened without interrupting her
He was quiet when she finished.
Looked at the table.
"She’s been there for two decades years," he said.
"Yes," Eve said.
"Alone."
"Yes."
He was quiet for another moment.
Then he looked at Vessa.
"You couldn’t have found her," he said. "Even if you’d been looking in the right place."
"No," Vessa said. "She hid too well." A pause. "She learned from the best."
Damon nodded then he turned to look at Eve and said "She must have feilt your sincerity when you went inside alone to meet her"
"She needed to know it meant something," Eve said. "That she will be safe if she comes out of hiding, that was all i did, i made her feel safe"
"That’s not all," he said. "That’s everything." He held her gaze.
She held his gaze back.
Didn’t argue.
Because he was right.
***
Raphael arrived later than expected.
Eve felt him through the bond before she heard the car.
Then headlights through the study window.
Then his voice in the entrance hall....low, talking to Silas, the two of them exchanging something brief and quiet before footsteps came down the corridor.
He came into the study.
He looked.....not bad exactly. But compressed.
Elena was behind him.
She’d come with him. Of course she had.
She looked at Eve across the room and something passed between them....warm, immediate.
Eve stood.
Crossed to Raphael.
He put his arms around her.
"You’re okay," she said.
"I’m fine," he said into her hair. "It wasn’t as difficult as Damian feared."
"You don’t know what Damian feared," she said.
"I know Damian," he said.
She felt him almost smile against her head.
She stepped back.
Let Damian cross the room.
The two of them looked at each other for a moment.....Raphael and Damian, two men who operated from entirely different frameworks and had found, somewhere in the months of this, a mutual respect for each other.
Raphael put his hand out.
Damian shook it.
"Thank you," Damian said.
"Don’t," Raphael said. "Just let me sit down and tell you what I found."
***
He told them about his findings and what he had to do to get the information.
He’d spent six in the sub level for the information he was looking for.
Not consecutive.....he’d done it in two separate visits, three hours each, two nights apart. Moving through the building the way he’d been moving through it for twenty years.
Nobody had looked at him twice.
The sub level entrance was where Vessa had said it would be, behind a door in the east archive that was coded and alarmed and had three layers of Malachai’s personal warding on it.
He told them how he had walked past it eight times over two nights before attempting it.
Learning the pattern.
The guards. The rotation. The specific window, forty minutes, twice a night, where the sub level was genuinely unmonitored.
How he eventually went in on the second night and spent forty minutes inside.
***
After explaining everything, he then placed a folder on the study table.
It was thicker than Vessa’s.
"Everything I could photograph," he said. "I didn’t take originals, taking originals would have triggered the inventory system and he’d have known immediately." He paused. "What’s in here are copies. High quality. Every page legible." He looked at Damian. "The originals are still in the vault. Which means if this goes to formal Conclave process we can compel their retrieval through legitimate channels."
"We’d need standing to compel," Silas said.
"We’ll have standing," Eve said.
Everyone looked at her.
"When Sable testifies," she said. "A direct witness to the original falsification, that’s sufficient standing to compel a formal audit of Malachai’s private records." She paused. "Vessa confirmed that precedent exists. Years ago a similar audit was conducted on a different Conclave member." She looked at Vessa.
"Seventy two years ago," Vessa said. "But yes. The precedent holds."
Damian looked at the folder.
At years of buried documentation sitting on his father’s desk.
"Open it," he said.
Raphael opened it.
The original vote record was on top.
Six pages. Dated sixty years ago, older than Eve had expected. The formal record of the first challenge to the Seraphim claim, filed before she was born, before her parents had even begun the formal ascension process.
The vote: four to one in favor of allowing the Seraphim claim to proceed.
Four to one.
Not the deadlock the official record showed. Not the narrow contested outcome that Malachai had used as the basis for twenty years of arguing the claim was illegitimate.
Four to one.
A clear majority.
Buried under a falsified record before Eve’s parents had even known the challenge existed.
Silas looked at the page.
Said nothing.
His jaw was tight.
Damon was very still.
Damian read it twice. Set it down. Picked up the next page.
Eve read the original vote record and felt something cold and precise move through her.
Not anger.
Older than anger.
That feeling of seeing the shape of something clearly for the first time. Of understanding not just what Malachai had done but how early he’d started doing it. How long he’d been planning. How carefully he’d laid the groundwork before anyone knew there was a game being played. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Sixty years ago.
Before her parents were adults.
He’d been building this for sixty years.
